From a National SEL Framework to a Measurement tool: process and research

• In Event: Teaching and learning experiences during COVID-19

Proposal

As Lebanon undergoes a downward spiral of events given its economic, political, security, and COVID-19 pandemic, education, like so many other sectors has been profoundly affected, with students being hit hardest; the compounding factors have interrupted children’s schooling and affected their overall social and emotional wellbeing.
Extended school closures left children missing out on learning in shared physical spaces in which to share interests, thoughts, emotions, and social interactions. Instead, they have been left with virtual learning and interactions, outside of a structured learning environment where they can learn and develop social and emotional skills such as empathy, emotional awareness, self-efficacy, respect for the environment and basic cognitive skills, all of which have creating barriers for real time teacher-child and peer interactions.
In the given context, while learning objectives can be achieved remotely, and to a certain extent, evaluated, being in the school and classroom environment allows for increased ease of meaningful assessments of children’s social and emotional skills. After 2 years of being out of school, allowing for smooth transition back to learning requires a better understanding about children’s social and emotional needs and skill acquisition to better support their healthy adaptation that will lead to better academic performance.
This presentation highlights:
1. How a contextualized national SEL framework was developed
2. The process of defining the competencies of the framework to developing a contextualized SEL measurement tool.
Literature review:
Social and emotional learning (SEL) provides a foundation for safe and positive learning, and enhances students' ability to succeed in school and life.
While SEL skills are important for all children, research has shown that they are even more critical in unpredictable and stressful environment. Evidence demonstrates that effects of experienced stress can be minimized or reversed when children are exposed to safe and predictable learning environments and have positive, nurturing relationships with adults, such as caregivers and teachers who create opportunities for children to acquire these skills.
Process and Findings:
Even prior to the deteriorating situation of the country, the Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MEHE) was committed to developing, and more recently endorsing a National Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Framework. The development of the SEL Framework stemmed from the lack of a contextualized, evidence-informed framework to guide the development of a relevant, context sensitive SEL measurement that targets SEL skills that are most important for children in Lebanon.
Under QITABI 2, the national SEL framework was developed with the close collaboration between MEHE and the Centre for Educational Research and Development (CERD) over the course of 2 years of rigorous work in 3 phases after having identified the priority competencies for Lebanon’s children: 1. defining those competencies 2. contextualizing the competencies through a national qualitative study and 3. Translating the framework to a context driven SEL measurement tool.
Phase 1: Ten priority competencies were identified. Two competencies that were found to be highly valued and considered priority skills in the Lebanese context were Ethical Values, and Flexibility (the rest include: Working memory; empathy; self-esteem; respect for the environment; emotional awareness; inhibitory control; self-efficacy; crisis management). These priority competencies were organized in a matrix, drawing on Bronfenbrenners ecological models of child development – with the vertical axis consisting of Self, Other, and Environment (Bronfenbrenner& Morris, 2007), and for the horizontal axis, drawing on developmental theories, consisting of Knowledge, Approach (attitude), and Behaviour (Iverson & Portnoy, 1977).
With the eventual development of an SEL assessment tool to evaluate the social and emotional skills of children in grades 1–6 in Lebanon, the prioritized SEL skills and/or competencies were classified according to the cognitive and affective domains of Bloom and Krathwohl’s taxonomy (Krathwohl, 2002; Krathwohl & Anderson, 2010); these were further broken down into cognitive, emotional, and social domains for ease of teasing out and evaluating developmentally relevant learning outcomes.
For each competency, general developmental objectives were described under each of the three domains, identifying the most basic to the more complex knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors within each (cognitive, emotional, and social) domain of each skill and/or competency. These definitions take into consideration the more granular skills that make up more complex SEL skills. The decomposition of complex skills from an assessment perspective provides a set of testable and revisable hypotheses as to what social and emotional knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors emerge when, enabling a more meaningful and precise understanding of how children in Lebanon develop these skills.
Phase 2: One hundred and twenty-three in-depth interviews were conducted, in Arabic, with teachers, principals, parents and students from both public and subsidized private schools. Questionnaire was divided into 3 main segments where participants are asked first, to think about what skills are more important for children to succeed in school; the second segment, what skills are most important for children to succeed beyond school, in life, and third segment focused specifically on the definition of competencies, where participants were asked how they defined certain constructs and whether the find those constructs to be important skills for children.
Phase 3: For analyses purposes, interviews were transcribed, coded, and analyzed; coding and analysis were done using the MAXQDA software; this software was prioritized given its features, namely its ability to import files in Arabic and creates codes and variables in Arabic; it also can import and directly transcribe audio and video files in the multimedia browser. Through the extensive coding process, new skills/subskills emerged; those were discussed in-depth, referred to our original question of what skills are most important for Lebanon’s children; and items were developed based on actual examples from the transcripts and further elaborated on. Developed items were then discussed systematically, with the involved Ministry technical focal points in social and emotional learning to ensure common agreement on the developed items, alignment with the framework and relevance in the given context. The next step will be to pilot the measurement tool through various iterations to ensure validation and reliability prior to formal use in the schools.

Authors

• Nahla Harb, Ministry of Education and Higher Education of Lebanon

• Sayde Francis, CRDP

• Garene Kaloustian, World Learning