Strategies to Model, Practice, and Integrate SEL and Soft Skills across the Education Continuum

Group Submission Type: Pre-conference Workshop

Description of Session

Literature reviews in low and middle income countries (LMIC) have found that targeted, explicit social and emotional learning (SEL) and soft skills instruction across the education continuum can promote learners’ overall well-being, as well as improve academic, employment, and health outcomes. All learners should have the opportunity to build social and emotional and soft skills through learning experiences that encourage feedback, reflection, practice, and application of these skills. Evidence suggests that supporting educator well-being, including teachers, coaches, and mentors, is the most effective way to support the development of social and emotional skills of learners, even when there is no separate SEL content in the curriculum. Importantly, educators must sustain their own physical, mental, emotional, and social wellbeing and ultimately embody the social and emotional skills they seek to impart on learners.

Given the challenging environment in which many educators work, including crisis and conflict-affected and low-resourced settings, this pre-conference workshop emphasizes how to support capable adults in understanding and modeling social-emotional and soft skills for learners from pre-primary to higher education. The objective of this pre-conference workshop is to highlight strategies that foster educators’ well-being and social and emotional skills, as well as model and practice SEL and soft skills activities for educators to employ in their contexts to foster a safe, equitable, and inclusive learning environment where all learners can thrive. The target audience for the workshop include educators themselves and practitioners who engage with SEL and soft skills programming through curriculum development, educator training, program design, and/or communities of practice. After participating in this pre-conference workshop, participants will be able to:
- Understand USAID’s approach to integrating SEL and soft skills evidence-based practices into learning activities across the education continuum, from pre-primary through higher education.
-Identify approaches to promote educator well-being
-Integrate contextually relevant and developmentally appropriate SEL and soft skills instructional strategies at the classroom and school-wide levels
- Facilitate safe, inclusive, and equitable learning spaces for all learners

This in-person, activity-based workshop will be an interactive space for practitioners to learn and practice techniques that foster self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making through mindfulness, creativity, and dialogue. Activities will include analysis of SEL and soft skills program examples from across the education continuum; deep dives into formal and informal coping strategies for educators at the classroom, school, and community-level; engagement in SEL and soft skills activities; creation and facilitation of SEL or soft skills activities that respond to learner needs; and reflection exercises on power, privilege, and bias.

Sub Unit

• Pre-Conference Workshops, Book launches, and Visual Art Exhibits / Pre-Conference Workshop

Workshop Organizer

• Anita Farsad, Training Resources Group

Presenters

• Daryn Cambridge, Training Resources Group, Inc.

• Laura Conrad, DDI Center for Education, United States Agency for International Development (USAID)

• Julia Finder Johna, Save the Children US

• Brianna Reed, Education Development Center, Inc.