Developing Learning Progressions for Life Skills to Strengthen Social Cohesion in East Africa

• In Event: Building Cohesive Societies Through Education: Systems-Level Approaches to Nurturing 21st-Century Skills for Social Cohesion in Diverse Contexts

Proposal

Education in East Africa carries transformative potential for fostering peace and strengthening social cohesion in contexts marked by deep social, economic, and cultural diversity. Recent reforms, including the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC), emphasize life skills such as collaboration, problem-solving, and self-awareness as critical for preparing learners to navigate differences constructively. However, evidence from the 2022 large-scale household-based assessment conducted by the Assessment of Life Skills and Values in East Africa (ALiVE) revealed striking gaps (RELI, 2022). Among over 45,000 adolescents assessed across Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania, only 8% demonstrated full proficiency in collaboration and 10% in self-awareness- two foundational capacities for empathy, tolerance, and constructive conflict resolution. These findings highlight the urgency of translating curricular aspirations into practical, developmentally grounded strategies for skills nurturing.
During analysis of the 2022 assessment, we learned that there is no shared recognition of what level of proficiency is reasonable to expect across ages or education grades within the countries of interest. We therefore reported skills proficiency in the context of a developmental progression, guided by the developed scoring rubrics — that is, describing what adolescents can do or demonstrate. To address these gaps, ALiVE commissioned a participatory mixed-methods study in 2024 to co-develop learning progressions for prioritized life skills with national education systems and classroom teachers in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zanzibar. The process began by identifying a small set of priority skills - no more than five - deemed most critical for educational and societal needs. These skills were subsequently deconstructed through collaborative workshops with teachers and system actors into sub-skills, sub-sub-skills, and observable behaviours, resulting in user-friendly skill frameworks accessible to both educators and parents. From these frameworks, learning progressions were developed to specify how each skill develops across grade levels, with clear, age-appropriate indicators of growth. Importantly, the process will engage teachers and systems stakeholders to co-create simple pedagogical approaches to support the integration of skills in classrooms, both through integrated methods (woven across subjects) and segregated methods (targeted skill-building activities).
The study demonstrates that collaboratively designed progressions can bridge the gap between policy aspirations and classroom realities. By deconstructing complex life skills into observable and measurable developmental stages, and by validating them in authentic classroom contexts, the progressions provide teachers, curriculum developers, and policymakers with practical roadmaps for nurturing 21st-century skills. Findings highlight that grounding life skills in local realities and equipping educators with clear developmental pathways enable education systems to move beyond rhetoric. The resulting progressions empower teachers to foster learners’ agency, empathy, and collaborative capacity, while also ensuring ownership and alignment with national priorities. Ultimately, the work illustrates how context-sensitive, co-created tools can support education systems in East Africa to strengthen social cohesion and prepare young people for inclusive and peaceful futures.

Authors

• Stella Rose Akongo, Luigi Giussani Institute for Higher Education

• Martin Ariapa, Luigi Giussani Foundation

• Khadija A Shariff, Milele Zanzibar Foundation

• Faridah Mubiru Nassereka, Uwezo Uganda