Highlighted Session: Social and emotional learning in Nigeria: Evidence from programs aiming to improve student social and emotional skills and youth leadership

Group Submission Type: Highlighted Paper Session

Proposal

In the 2018 World Bank World Development Report, “Learning to Realize Education’s Promise”, the World Bank warns of a learning crisis occurring across the globe with countless children not able to perform basic cognitive functions. Learning shortfalls eventually show up as weak skills in the workforce in the future. Lack of skills reduces job quality, earnings, and labor mobility. In the context of the pandemic, these skills are only growing in importance. The OECD’s 2021 Study on Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) demonstrates that these skills can be supported by both teachers and their school communities and speaks to the importance of student wellbeing in order for students to thrive as leaders in their context, in particular during times of uncertainty and instability such as the global pandemic. The skills needed in the 21st century are multi-dimensional, so systems need to equip students with far more than just reading, writing, and math. The evidence suggests that a focus on both social and emotional and cognitive skills development will be critical in alleviating this learning crisis and ensuring a strong labor market in the future.

Over the past decade, research is advancing to better understanding of how to measure these social and emotional skills, along with how to influence them, is growing rapidly in Nigeria. This panel comprises multiple organizations and researchers working in Nigeria to better understand how to develop social and emotional learning that is both contextually relevant and leads to improved student learning and opportunity for a better future. The panel will feature new innovations in measurement that contribute to the growing literature of interventions that aim to develop student leadership and social and emotional learning, and provide both policy makers and research practitioners new approaches to social and emotional skills development in Nigeria.

As a member of the Teach For All global network, Teach For Nigeria actively supports student social and emotional learning by cultivating the leadership of its teaching fellows to teach in their nation’s most disadvantaged communities. In this session, Edikan Mbang, Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Coordinator at Teach For Nigeria, will present their work to prioritize holistic student outcomes in their training and support model and how they are adapting social and emotional learning scales and measures in their context. Panelist Kata Mihaly, Senior Economist at the RAND Corporation, will present the independent, quasi-experimental evaluation of Teach For Nigeria examining the organization’s effect on whole child development (including student learning and student social and emotional skills), students’ perceptions of teacher effectiveness, and the role of Teach For Nigeria teachers on the school community. Baseline data was collected in October 2021 and endline data will be collected in June 2022. Baseline results should provide valuable information that Teach For Nigeria and other organizations and interventions developing social and emotional skills of primary aged students in Nigeria and should use the insights for designing and supporting holistic child development.

A USAID activity recently completed an experimental evaluation of the Addressing Education in Northeast Nigeria (AENN) program to boost children’s learning outcomes in terms of reading and math, as well as social and emotional learning outcomes. To meet the educational needs of out-of-school children and youth, AENN provides quality basic education for 6-15 year olds via non-formal learning centers (NFLCs). Panelist Elyssa Skeririk , Technical Officer at FHI 360 will present relative impacts of employing two modalities of delivering SEL content to learners across AENN’s Hausa-based NFLCs: Standalone lessons and Social and Emotional Learning Add-ons integrated into curricular instruction.

The panel will also feature researchers from the World Bank Africa Gender Innovation Lab. Ayodele Fashogbon, Economist, World Bank will present two impact evaluations and a measurement study in Nigeria that are focused on the relationship between socio-emotional skills and economic empowerment. One research was aimed at understanding how SEL can improve jobs or self-employment’s outcomes between classroom-based skill training and industry-led training, as well as, estimating gender differential impact on youth from vulnerable households. The second research is aiming to understand which SEL matter most for economic empowerment. In parallel, they developed a framework of fourteen SEL both self-report and alternative measures in order to examine which skills matter most for economic empowerment.

Mika’ilu Ibrahim, Education Adviser FCDO, will chair the panel to explore the following questions:
What student social and emotional learning competencies are most relevant in Nigeria?
What are some of the most innovative strategies for monitoring and evaluating student social and emotional learning in Nigeria?
What can we learn from research on how to support classrooms, school communities, and young people to support their student social and emotional learning?

Sub Unit

• Monitoring and Evaluation SIG

Chair

• Mika`Ilu Ibrahim, FCDO

Individual Presentations

• Developing and Measuring Student Social and Emotional Learning in Teach For Nigeria - Edikan Mbang, Teach For Nigeria

• Evaluating the Teach For Nigeria leadership program on student social and emotional learning - Kata Mihaly, RAND Corporation

• Testing different modalities of SEL instruction delivery in non-formal education:should SEL be integrated into academic instruction or be its own subject? - Elyssa A Skeirik, FHI 360

• Measuring and Evaluating the Economic Outcomes of Socio-emotional Skill Programs in Nigeria - Ayodele Emmanuel Fashogbon, The World Bank Group