Emotion understanding (EU) describes the ability to identify, interpret, and communicate about emotions, and is often targeted by social-emotional learning (SEL) programs. Still, the theoretical framing of SEL programs and their impact on specific areas of social-emotional development, such as EU, for different age bands is not always transparent. This systematic review synthesized emotion-focused content in SEL programs used in quantitative outcome studies in middle childhood to identify which EU components are targeted and examine content congruence with an integrated EU development model drawing on the Pons EU developmental model and the Crick and Dodge social-information processing (SIP) model that posits emotion identification as fundamental to social decision-making in childhood. A total of 38 programs for Grades 3 to 5 across 54 studies in 20 countries were reviewed. Program aims, lesson topics, and activities were extracted and mapped to a 10-component EU framework integrating the nine Pons model components (‘recognition, external cause, reminder, desire, belief, hiding, regulation, mixed, morality’) with one based on the SIP model (‘decision/action’). At least 87% of emotion-focused SEL content targeted EU components of recognition, regulation, and social decision-making. Findings indicate a good level of congruence between emotion-focused SEL program content and prevailing EU development models. Many programs emphasized the external causes of emotions, underscoring the importance of scenarios to explain emotions—discussed further in light of cross-cultural variation in emotion socialization. We encourage SEL intervention research to be more transparent in reporting SEL program content and activities to move toward causal explanations of program impact.
