Improving uptake and quality and fidelity of implementation of SEL programming in emergency settings: locally sourcing SEL content

• In Event: Uptake and quality implementation of social and emotional learning programs: evidence & lessons from contexts of crisis

Proposal

Rigorous evidence conducted by the IRC and NYU Global Ties on SEL programs in emergency settings such as Lebanon, Niger and Nigeria have yielded promising results but ones that have not replicated the impacts cited from evidence in more Western contexts. In Niger, activities targeting Mindfulness skills in a Healing Classrooms Tutoring (HCT) program improved children’s ability to manage sadness and showed reductions in aggressive reactions, as well as in Lebanon improve literacy and numeracy skills compared to those who received HCT alone. When Brain Games kernels were added to HCT, children’s grades improved. However, SEL targeted interventions did not directly impact children’s literacy or numeracy competencies in Niger and did not improve the great majority of SEL skills tested. One hypothesis for these results based on qualitative data is that SEL materials were insufficiently localized, and had poor cultural relevance, which resulted in low uptake and implementation in classrooms by teachers.

The IRC partnered with the Harvard EASEL lab in Northeast Nigeria to use a human-centered design approach to develop flexible, low-cost low-intensity activities, called “kernels of practice”, that are easy to implement within the standard curriculum in low-resource, conflict and crisis affected settings. Both organizations engaged in formative research with local stakeholders in northeast Nigeria to identify local priorities, beliefs, and values for non-academic skills and developed a set of SEL activities that included locally sourced content as well as content from other settings that was then highly localized through an iterative process of prototyping to meet the needs of students and teachers in the region.

IRC and Harvard conducted implementation research to identify the degree to which engaging an intense process to locally source SEL content and localize effective SEL activities from other contexts actually results in improved teacher uptake, and higher levels of quality and fidelity of implementation of SEL programming in conflict and crisis settings. The study aims to test the hypothesis that, compared to traditional Western-based SEL programming, leveraging local practices and engaging in intense processes of localization will result in greater teacher uptake and quality and fidelity of implementation of SEL programming in conflict and crisis settings.

Author

• Jennifer Tanga Sklar, International Rescue Committee