Basic learning for life: From assessment to action for greater equity and inclusion in education systems

• In Event: Education, Social Mobility and Struggles

Proposal

The pandemic has reinforced the well-known need for education to actively engage in the integral development of children, and not only in the so-called "academic" learnings. It is now evident that socioemotional learnings or learnings for life must be "academic", must be taught and learned in the classroom, and must be the concern and occupation of the educational systems. However, the wide range of topics encompassed by socio-emotional learnings and learnings for life in recent years has made it a challenging package to handle.
These "emerging" educational topics have been extensively studied in other disciplines and evaluated and addressed from various perspectives. Now, within the field of education and rebranded as "learnings," they are necessarily included in curricula, giving rise to new challenges; the first of them is measurement and assessment.
Two of the mechanisms through which assessment in education, specifically the evaluation of basic learnings, can generate changes are: 1) the generation and dissemination of evidence that puts the finger on the sore spot and identifies lags and inequalities; and 2) the link between evaluation and action.
Regarding the first point, instruments have been developed to measure learnings for life (also called life skills), either as a whole or separately. However, as is often the case in the field of measurement, these instruments mainly emerge in developed countries with few possibilities of free and open access.
Thus, based on the approach of basic learnings, before the pandemic, the Independent Measurement of Learning (MIA for its acronym in Spanish) project developed and validated three instruments to measure some of the components of learnings for life, considering them as basic learnings: emotional management, citizenship, and self-care. It is based on the understanding that basic learnings are fundamental to achieve the following purposes: a) enabling the full exercise of citizenship within the framework of the reference society, b) building and developing a satisfying life project, c) ensuring balanced emotional and affective personal development, or d) accessing subsequent educational and formative processes with guarantees of success (Coll & Martín, 2006, p. 17).
Subsequently, MIA developed the intervention "MIA for Life: Training for Citizenship and Peace", which is based on the socio-constructivist and cognitive-behavioral approaches. It presents a series of activities for children focusing on three central themes: citizenship, self-care, and emotional management. The intervention consists of 12 group sessions, each lasting 3 hours.
This presentation showcases the results of the pilot study and discusses the potential and limitations that assessments must achieve greater equity and inclusion in educational systems.

Authors

• Anabel Velásquez-Durán, IIE- Universidad Veracruzana

• Samana Vergara Lope Tristán, Universidad Veracruzana

• Felipe Hevia, CIESAS