Rooting SEL/PSS measurement in purpose: How decision trees address the fit-for-context challenge

• In Event: Moving the Needle: Addressing challenges in SEL/SS measurement with an emphasis on local contexts

Proposal

Contexts of Education in Emergencies and Protracted Crisis (EIEPC) expose children to life-threatening events and a disruptive reality. “Children and adolescents are particularly vulnerable to negative mental health impacts due to emergency events from a combination of physiological, cognitive, and developmental factors.” [UNICEF, Policy Brief “The global costs and benefits of mental health and psychosocial support interventions in education settings across the Humanitarian-Development Nexus; 2023]. The accumulated factors inhibit learning and neurological development.
School-based SEL interventions offer “a particularly strong benefit-to-cost ratio across all countries at risk for humanitarian emergencies” [ibid]. However, to determine effectiveness school-based social-emotional learning (SEL) and psycho-social support (PSS) programmes need to measure results, which still is a formidable challenge for many implementers of such interventions in EIEPC contexts.
The INEE already hosts two important tools: a Measurement Library with validated holistic learning measurement tools for EIEPC contexts, as well as a PSS-SEL Toolkit which allows for comparison and contextualization of SEL and PSS programmes.
However, further guidance is needed for national and international actors to support the measurement of PSS and SEL programmes and to determine which approaches and tools for measurement are fit for which context.
Under the umbrella of the Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) a workstream of the Data Working Group has set itself the ambition to support joint approaches to monitoring, evaluation, and learning for collective, child-based holistic learning outcomes in EiE settings.
Against this challenging background, major actors collaborate to develop decision trees and guidance material to support contextually-relevant SEL and PSS assessment. The guidance aims to help in the identifying and selecting appropriate assessment tools that match intended purposes, that are valid and reliable for the context and purpose, and that serve to strengthen local capacity. This guidance would then need to be linked to the INEE Measurement Library to match assessment tools that are valid and reliable for the context and purpose. These efforts are also meant to strengthen local capacity by demystifying measurement of SEL and PSS interventions and providing step-by-step guidance along the path.
Overall, we expect that the combination of tools and guidance that are being developed under the INEE umbrella will increase momentum on measuring holistic learning, including SEL and PSS, in crisis and conflict contexts. These efforts may also help to bring together implementers to overcome the challenges of fragmentation around measurement in the field.
Given what we already know about learning poverty in EIEPC contexts and given what we don’t know about children’s wellbeing and social-emotional development, which are also enablers of basic literacy and numeracy, we cannot afford anymore to ignore the measurement of holistic learning outcomes, including SEL and PSS.

Author

• Sonja H Anderson, INEE