Character education and social-emotional learning are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing. Understanding where they overlap, where they diverge, and why the distinction matters will help you choose the right approach for your classroom and your community.
If you work in an elementary school, you have almost certainly encountered both terms. You may have heard them used as synonyms. You may have heard one praised and the other criticized. You may have been told your school “does character education” when what you are actually doing looks a lot like SEL, or vice versa.
The confusion is understandable. Both aim to develop the whole child. Both address skills and dispositions that go beyond academics. Both show up in morning meetings, guidance lessons, and schoolwide assemblies. But they come from different intellectual traditions, emphasize different things, and increasingly carry different political associations. If you are selecting a curriculum, justifying a program to parents, or trying to figure out what your school actually needs, the distinction is worth understanding.
What Character Education Actually Is
Character education has deep roots in American public schooling. Its core premise is that schools have a responsibility to help students develop specific virtues and moral habits, things like honesty, respect, responsibility, fairness, kindness, and perseverance.[1]
The focus is on what kind of person a student should become. Lessons tend to center on modeling, practicing, and reinforcing specific character traits, often through stories, role models, class pledges, schoolwide themes, and recognition systems. A school might designate October as “Respect Month,” read books about respectful behavior, discuss what respect looks like in the hallway and the cafeteria, and recognize students who demonstrate it.
Character education answers the question: What values should guide a student's behavior?
The research base here is more fragmented than in SEL, partly because “character education” encompasses a wide range of program types, from structured curricula to loosely organized trait-of-the-month approaches. The most comprehensive review of character education research, conducted by Berkowitz and Bier, found that well-designed programs can reduce problem behaviors, improve school climate, and strengthen peer relationships, but that effectiveness varies significantly by implementation quality.[1]
What Social-Emotional Learning Actually Is
Social-emotional learning, as defined by the CASEL framework, is the process through which students develop and apply five core competencies: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making.[2]
The focus is less on what values to hold and more on what skills to practice. SEL asks: can a student identify what they are feeling? Can they manage that feeling in a productive way? Can they take another person's perspective? Can they communicate during conflict? Can they think through the consequences of a decision before acting?
SEL answers the question: How does a student learn to navigate emotions, relationships, and decisions?
The research base for SEL is extensive. A meta-analysis of 213 school-based SEL programs involving over 270,000 students found an 11-percentile-point gain in academic achievement, along with improved social skills, fewer conduct problems, and reduced emotional distress.[3] A follow-up meta-analysis confirmed that these benefits persisted six months to 18 years after intervention, and that early social-emotional skill development was the strongest predictor of long-term outcomes.[4] As of the 2023-24 school year, 83 percent of U.S. school principals reported using an SEL curriculum, up from 46 percent in 2017-18.[5]
Where They Overlap
In practice, the two approaches share significant common ground.[6] Both:
A teacher leading a lesson on kindness that includes identifying emotions, practicing empathy, and discussing how to respond when someone is unkind is doing both character education and SEL simultaneously. The overlap is real and extensive.
Where They Diverge
The meaningful differences tend to show up at the level of framing, not classroom activity.[6][7]
Orientation
Character education is oriented toward virtues and moral formation. It starts with the question of what is right and works outward toward behavior. SEL is oriented toward competencies and skill development. It starts with the question of what is effective and works outward toward application. A character education lens says a student should be honest because honesty is a virtue. An SEL lens says a student should understand what they are feeling, consider the consequences of lying versus telling the truth, and choose a course of action. The destination is similar; the reasoning pathway is different.
Intellectual Roots
Character education has roots in moral philosophy, civic tradition, and virtue ethics. SEL has roots in developmental psychology, public health, and cognitive science.[7] This difference in pedigree shapes how each field talks about itself, what kinds of evidence it prioritizes, and which professional communities it speaks to.
Scope of Skill Development
SEL explicitly addresses internal regulation (self-awareness, self-management) as a prerequisite for outward behavior. Character education often treats the outward behavior itself as the target, with less emphasis on the internal mechanics of how a student gets there. A character education program might teach students that perseverance is important. An SEL program would also teach them what frustration feels like in their body, what strategies help them manage it, and how to set incremental goals when a task feels overwhelming.
Moral Prescription vs. Skill Neutrality
Some character education programs are explicitly prescriptive about which values students should adopt. SEL, by design, focuses on developing capacities (empathy, self-regulation, decision-making) without prescribing specific moral conclusions.[6] This distinction is part of why SEL has faced political criticism: opponents argue that its apparent value-neutrality is itself a value position, while proponents argue that skill development is a prerequisite for any kind of moral reasoning.
The Political Dimension
It would be incomplete to discuss this topic without addressing the political context. Since 2021, at least 25 states have seen legislative proposals to restrict or ban SEL in public schools.[8]As of 2024, very few of these bills had passed, but the political pressure has prompted some districts to rebrand their SEL programs using terms like “life skills,” “student wellness,” or, notably, “character education.”[9]
This rebranding is strategic. Character education has broader political acceptance than SEL, partly because of its association with traditional values and moral formation rather than psychological frameworks. A 2024 RAND/CASEL survey found that 46 percent of educators still use the term “social-emotional learning,” but a growing number of districts are shifting language to reduce controversy without abandoning the underlying practices.[5][9]
For educators choosing a program, this means the label on the box matters less than what is inside it.
A curriculum marketed as “character education” may in fact be a full CASEL-aligned SEL program. A program branded as “SEL” may be primarily focused on character virtues. Reading the scope and sequence, examining the lesson structure, and evaluating the evidence base are more useful than relying on the category name.
Why the Best Programs Do Both
The most effective approaches combine character education's moral clarity with SEL's skill-building rigor.[7] Here is why both components matter:
Character without skills is aspiration without capacity
A student who knows honesty is important but lacks the self-regulation to manage the anxiety of admitting a mistake will still lie. Knowing the right thing to do is not sufficient without the emotional and social skills to actually do it.
Skills without character are tools without direction
A student with excellent self-regulation and social awareness but no moral framework could use those skills manipulatively. Empathy without a commitment to kindness is just good intelligence-gathering. SEL competencies need an ethical orientation to point them toward prosocial ends.
Research supports integration
Programs that combine explicit character trait instruction with structured SEL skill development tend to produce stronger outcomes across both behavioral and academic measures than programs that emphasize only one approach.[1][3] The Durlak meta-analysis found that the most effective SEL programs used what the researchers called SAFE practices: Sequenced activities, Active learning, Focused time on skill development, and Explicit skill targets.[3] Character education provides the explicit targets; SEL provides the sequenced, active skill development.
What This Means for Choosing a Curriculum
When evaluating a program for your school, the character education vs. SEL distinction is less important than whether the program actually does both. Here is what to look for:
Does it name specific character traits or values?
Programs that focus only on abstract competencies without grounding them in recognizable virtues can feel vague to students and hard to communicate to parents.
Does it teach internal regulation, not just external behavior?
Programs that focus only on “be kind” or “show respect” without teaching students how to manage the emotions that make kindness and respect difficult will produce compliance rather than competence.
Does it provide structured, sequential lessons?
Both character education and SEL research agree that one-off assemblies and poster campaigns are less effective than consistent, scaffolded instruction across the school year.[1][3]
Does it work for your community?
In some school communities, the language of character education will resonate more naturally with families. In others, the CASEL framework provides the structure and credibility that administrators need. The best program is the one your teachers will actually use and your community will actually support.
Is it evidence-based?
Regardless of what it calls itself, does the program have research supporting its effectiveness? The bar here is not perfection, but it should be more than testimonials.
For a deeper look at what to evaluate when selecting a program, see our guide on how to choose an SEL curriculum for elementary school.
A Note on Terminology in This Guide
Throughout our resources, we use the term “SEL” because it is the most widely recognized term in the research literature and the professional education community. But Be The Buffalo is, by design, a character education program that teaches social-emotional skills. The curriculum is organized around specific character traits (kindness, self-control, conflict resolution, resilience, grit) and teaches the CASEL-aligned competencies that make those traits actionable in students' lives.
We use the term that the research uses. But what we build is what classrooms need: character with skills, values with tools.
Final Thoughts
The distinction between character education and SEL is real but often overstated. In the classroom, the best instruction looks the same regardless of which label it carries: a teacher leading a structured lesson that names a specific value, teaches the skills required to live that value, and gives students practice applying both in real situations.
If your school is debating which approach to adopt, the answer is probably both. If your district has moved away from the term “SEL” for political reasons, the underlying research and practices remain valid regardless of what you call them. If you are a teacher trying to figure out what actually works, look for programs that combine clear character language with structured skill development, are sequenced across the school year, and require minimal prep time so you will actually use them.
The label is a communication choice. The instruction is what changes outcomes.
References
- [1]
Berkowitz, M. W., & Bier, M. C. (2004). Research-based character education. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 591, 72-85.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0002716203260082 - [2]
CASEL. (n.d.). What is the CASEL framework?
https://casel.org/fundamentals-of-sel/what-is-the-casel-framework/ - [3]
Durlak, J. A., Weissberg, R. P., Dymnicki, A. B., Taylor, R. D., & Schellinger, K. B. (2011). The impact of enhancing students' social and emotional learning: A meta-analysis of school-based universal interventions. Child Development, 82(1), 405-432.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01564.x - [4]
Taylor, R. D., Oberle, E., Durlak, J. A., & Weissberg, R. P. (2017). Promoting positive youth development through school-based social and emotional learning interventions: A meta-analysis of follow-up effects. Child Development, 88(4), 1156-1171.
https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12864 - [5]
RAND Corporation & CASEL. (2024). Social and emotional learning in U.S. schools: Findings from the American Teacher Panel and American School Leader Panel Surveys.
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA1800/RRA1822-2/RAND_RRA1822-2.pdf - [6]
EdGate. (2023). SEL vs Character Ed: Why publishers need to understand the difference.
https://edgate.com/blog/sel-vs-character-ed - [7]
Greater Good Science Center, UC Berkeley. (n.d.). Building a bridge between social emotional learning and character education.
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/building_a_bridge_between_social_emotional_learning_and_character_education - [8]
EdWeek. (2023). Social-emotional learning persists despite political backlash.
https://www.edweek.org/leadership/social-emotional-learning-persists-despite-political-backlash/2023/07 - [9]
EdWeek. (2025). SEL by another name? Political pushback prompts rebranding.
https://www.edweek.org/leadership/sel-by-another-name-political-pushback-prompts-rebranding/2025/10
Character Education + SEL Skills in One Curriculum
Be The Buffalo combines specific character traits with CASEL-aligned skill development. 40 weeks of bilingual K-5 curriculum. No student devices. No prep.