Teachers’ and learners’ perceptions of SEL-Informed teaching in Vietnamese secondary English Education

Social-emotional learning (SEL) has been widely discussed as a framework for supporting learners’ well-being, relationships, and academic development, yet its relevance to language education in underrepresented contexts remains insufficiently explored. This study examines how teachers and learners in Vietnamese secondary English classrooms perceived SEL-informed teaching, understood here as socially and emotionally responsive classroom practices and teacher orientations guided by SEL principles rather than as a formal SEL programme. Guided by SEL theory, sociocultural theory, and humanistic language pedagogy, we employed a qualitative interview design. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in Vietnamese with ten English language teachers and ten secondary school learners from two public schools in an urban area of Vietnam. The interviews were transcribed, translated into English, and analysed thematically. Four interrelated themes emerged from the data. Participants associated SEL-informed teaching with emotionally safer and more supportive classrooms, greater learner confidence and participation, and stronger empathy and collaboration among peers. At the same time, both teachers and learners described tensions between relational pedagogy and the exam-oriented expectations of Vietnamese schooling. Most notably, several teachers reported a shift in how they understood their professional role, moving from a narrow focus on content delivery toward a more relational and developmental view of teaching. The study contributes context-sensitive evidence from Vietnam and suggests that SEL in language education is best understood not as a fixed imported framework, but as a pedagogical orientation interpreted and negotiated within local educational realities.