Lebanon’s Social Emotional Learning Baseline

• In Event: Socio-Emotional Learning: contextualization, assessment and growth trajectories – findings from Lebanon and Senegal

Proposal

Conducting a SEL baseline for the first time in Lebanon is timely given three key considerations: 1) The challenging contexts in which children are learning that can have long-term negative implications on their overall well-being and school retention; 2) The lack of existing data/evidence on children’s social and emotional skills to better inform different levels of support provisions needed whether at the school level, parental programs, mental health support, referrals, and the like; and 3) The MEHE is devising a comprehensive curriculum review plan. Findings from this SEL baseline will help inform curricular and resource planning to ensure schools are healthy, safe learning enivronments for children.

The baseline used a contextually relevant and reliable SEL measurement tool in line with Lebanon’s national SEL framework (N-SELF): the Teacher’s Observations of Learner’s Social and Emotional Learning (TOOLSEL). The TOOLSEL is a teacher report measure to assess the status and improvement of learner’s SEL skills reliably and validly. It captures a range of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral competencies that are aligned with the N-SELF and that are important for children’s successful social and academic adaptation in classrooms in crisis contexts, and which teachers can observe through daily classroom interactions . The focus of the TOOLSEL is specifically on capturing: 1) Social competencies and social problems that children display in classroom environments, e.g., is s/he friendly; is s/he liked by other students; 2) Executive functions such as the working memory functioning, e.g., does s/he pay attention; does s/he concentrate; 3) Emotional and behavioral regulation, e.g., does s/he wait to be called on before responding; does s/he use self-control techniques when asked to wait; and 4) Emotional expression e.g., does s/he have difficulty getting things done? Does s/he lose control.

The SEL baseline study was conducted in Lebanese public schools in Grades 2, 3 and 6. A total of 396 teachers participated, with a total of 2,363 student reports. Preliminary findings from this SEL baseline showed that on average, a higher percentage of 2nd, 3rd, and 6th grade females vs. males, often to most of the time showed prosocial behaviour, working memory functions, emotional regulation, and emotional expression with little variation across grade levels. For example, teachers report that on average, 38.4% of females often to most of the time can regulate their emotions vs. 17.5% males. While the baseline study is a first in Lebanon, it corroborates with SEL pilot data from studies conducted using similar constructs. These findings will be shared with the Ministry on the state of children’s social and emotional standing for the purposes of programming, professional development, needed resources for teachers, strategies to be used within the pedagogical and instructional approaches and support needed for children to ensure their well-being and learning in healthy safe learning spaces.

Authors

• Mirvat Said Merhi, World Learning

• Taline Tontian, World Learning

• Georgia Hachem, Ministry of Education and Higher Education of Lebanon