Socio-emotional Learning outcomes among Children in 3rd to 5th grade in Zambia: Role of the Catch-Up remedial Program

• In Event: Holistic Education: Pedagogies and Learning Outcomes

Proposal

To create more equitable access to quality education, education systems globally have utilized remedial education programs. Remedial interventions are proven successful in tackling children’s backlog in different development domains due to low quality education. This paper focusses on a remedial intervention in primary education that was implemented in Zambia. The remedial intervention called “Catch Up” is based on the Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) methodology developed in India. Teacher training and ability grouping are two core features of Catch Up. The intervention also integrates aspects of Learning through Play (LtP) in its bundle of activities with students. The main scope of focus of Catch Up is to tackle children’s backlog in foundational numeracy and literacy skills, the effectiveness of which has already been proven in previous studies on TaRL. However, in this study, we investigated the impact of Catch Up on social emotional learning (SEL). This study is important because it potentially provides evidence of the role of the Learning through play pedagogies such as the Teaching at the right level Catch-Up remedial program, on social emotional learning among learners in Zambia and sub-Saharan Africa. The study relies on a treatment and control group, a pre and post measurement tracking of the same children over time. Data were collected using an adapted International Social Emotional Learning Assessment tool ISELA and classroom observations on play-based learning. Stratified random sampling in both treatment and control groups was used to obtain the sample of learners. Learners were stratified by grade and gender before being randomly assigned to the sample. A total of 3, 000 learners were targeted at Lusaka and Central provinces with 30 learners per school or 10 learners per grade included. Out of the targeted number of learners to be assessed at baseline, 2,619 filled in a survey. After data cleaning, the final sample arrived at 2,592 unique children.
Cronbach’s alpha was run using STATA to test the reliability of each Social emotional Learning scales included in the ISELA. After data was cleaned, most scales for the SEL domains performed well. The findings were as follows. Relationship domain (83%), empathy domain (79%), stress management (79%), Perseverance (98%), solving problem (79%), Environment safety (75%) and self-concept (58%) showed good reliability scores. Baseline T-test results after matching analysis also revealed that at baseline, there were no significant differences between treatment and control across most of the variables (social demographic and SEL domains). Social Emotional Learning levels among learners at baseline were low in some domains both in treatment and control.
Baseline findings on the relationship domain showed that on average, about 63 percent in control and 65 in treatment with most falling 0.3 below or above the mean identified networks in moments when they experienced emotional problems. The children assessed in both control and treatment had someone to consult when experiencing emotional problems and access to these networks leaned more towards peers than it did towards people at home and towards adults in the community. Findings on the stress management domain revealed that on average, children identified 0.3 strategies in control and 0.5 strategies in treatment with most falling 0.4 below and above the mean. About 64% identified one strategy and 40.1% identified at least two strategies of calming themselves down when they are angry. Moreover, results on empathy at baseline showed that about 45% of the children answered empathy questions correctly across control and treatment with scores ranging from 16% to 82% correct. With regards to children’s persistence at baseline, most children attempted all drawing activities in both control and treatment with an average number of attempts of 0.7 across both treatment and control. Findings on solving conflict at baseline showed that the average correct score on solving conflict was 43% for control and 50% for treatment. The highest score was 81.7% correctness for the first scenario and the lowest was 22.2% correctness. This means that ability to solve conflict among the children is average. Furthermore, baseline results further showed that the average self-concept correct score was 76% in control and 72% in treatment. This implies that most children were able to identify themselves by drawing their future self and where able to describe details of their drawings. Findings on environment safety in the school at baseline showed that on average, at least 49% in control and 39 % in treatment confirmed witnessing unsafe occurrences in the school.

Moreover, learners in the treatment group are exposed to the Catch-Up programme between February and September 2022. In September 2022, the endline data will be collected on SEL as to determine the effect of the Catch-Up intervention. Furthermore, the endline data will also cover data on knowledge, attitudes and practices from teachers of the group of learners engaged in our study. These data are complemented with key informant interviews from teachers and implementers. This submission will give a first look at the results of the impact of Catch Up on SEL by November 2022 and the time of the CIES 2023 conference.

Author

• Michael Phiri, VVOB - education for development