Validating cultural adaptations of a school-based social-emotional learning programme for use with Latino immigrant adolescents

Immigrant youth face many challenges as they adapt to a new culture and society. School-based social-emotional learning (SEL) interventions have been proposed to teach these children's coping skills that can help them with such life-changing transitions. A growing body of research supports the need to make adaptations to any evidence-based intervention, including SEL, to ensure the intervention's efficacy and cultural sensitivity. The purpose of this paper is to describe the process of adapting an evidence-based SEL programme for use with a group of Latino immigrant adolescents enrolled in public schools in the USA. The ecology validity framework was adopted for the pilot/feasibility study described in this paper. A group of 40 recent-immigrant Latino adolescents participated in the study. Participants reported favourable social validity and acceptability ratings. The youth also demonstrated an increase in SEL knowledge. The results suggested that developing and implementing cultural adaptations to existing evidence-based interventions in school settings is feasible and socially valid. Implications for culturally responsive school-based interventions are presented.