People are excited about the potential of programs focused on children’s social and emotional learning (SEL). At the least, they can make learning a more engaging and enjoyable experience for children. But, do we know how and if SEL programs work, especially across the diverse economic, ethnic and cultural contexts that constitute low- or middle-income countries (LMICs)? The enthusiasm for SEL programs has galloped ahead of the evidence. We’re optimistic too, but believe we need to think more clearly about SEL programs and the evidence that supports them. The SEL field is still in its infancy and a recent background paper developed for the 2024 Spotlight Report, Learning Counts, helps us sharpen our thinking about it. Here are some ways the field could develop.
1. Be more specific about what SEL programs are
In program design and evidence reviews, the broad term “SEL programs” is used frequently. We can advance the field by seeking greater clarity about four aspects of SEL programs.
a. Be clearer about what SEL programs are trying to achieve
Advocates say SEL programs can improve children’s well-being, academic learning, can develop skills for a successful life and build resilience in the face of conflict and crisis. But these four sets of goals– and the approach one would take to achieve each of them– are quite different. Programs need to be clear about their main SEL goal. This is key for designing a focused program and deciding on the best approach. This first step is critical for improving coherence of a program and determining the potential approach(es) to achieve this goal. Our focus is on SEL programs to improve academic learning, which we’ll discuss in the rest of this blog.
b. Be clearer about the programmatic approach
SEL programs also vary in how they try to achieve these goals. Typically, programs focus on one of two things: improving the climate in the classroom, the school, and the community or building specific skills – either through standalone SEL lessons or integrated into regular classes. Although skills-building dominates the SEL conversation, some programs, especially those that work on creating a positive school climate, aim to meet children’s social and emotional needs (such as the need to feel safe) as much as building skills. Programs should be clear if they’re building skills, responding to needs, or doing both.
c. Specify the skills being targeted
SEL programs also differ in the skills they target. Teaching empathy is different from teaching critical thinking, but both often get grouped under “SEL programs”. As research and programs advance, we need to be clearer about the specific skills each SEL program is targeting. For example, a recent study in Kenya, which we describe in our background paper, found that specific SEL skills, like building relationships and self-confidence, are linked to academic success.
d. Specifying the mechanisms by which skills contribute to program goals
The Kenya study points to skills that might improve academic outcomes, such as self-confidence. If we understand how specific SEL skills lead to better academic results, we can refine our intervention strategy. The background paper suggests two ways (among many) that SEL might improve learning: boosting students’ confidence and creating a classroom environment that encourages participation. Specifying these mechanisms enables programs to target specific intermediate outcomes (e.g. a supportive environment) and to monitor mechanisms (e.g. greater participation in class) to develop a stronger understanding of how a program works.
2. Assess the added value of SEL programs
This brings us to our second point: when it comes to improving academic outcomes, we need a stronger evidence base that pin-points the added value of SEL programs. Many of the best programs – such as IRC’s healing classrooms – combine SEL and instructional improvements into a single intervention. This makes it hard to tell which part is driving the results. We need evaluations that separate the effects of SEL from those of traditional teaching methods.
Conclusion
Overall, the SEL field, especially in LMICs, needs more clarity and focus. A clear model showing how SEL programs work, their goals, approaches, and impact on children’s outcomes, would benefit the whole field. Our background paper includes two studies that help build this model. Such a model would allow program designers to be more intentional and make it easier to categorize evidence based on different goals and approaches, rather than just asking the generic question, ‘Do SEL programs work?'”
We need stronger evidence showing a clear link between SEL programs and academic outcomes. SEL has enjoyed a lot of optimism, but without rigorous, precise evidence to support it, that optimism might not last. To ensure SEL programs truly benefit children in low- and middle-income countries, we need more studies that pinpoint what works and how.
This is thought-provoking. I, too, teach SEL based curriculum in a Mumbai based school, and I sometimes feel the teachers need a highly sensitive and netural approach in the classroom. A lot of us adult caregivers and educators carry our own perceptions and experiences to the class while teaching.
While I concur with the wording of the title of this valuable blogpost, I would like to pick up some of the framing of the discussion.
First, the focus on programmes. Programmes are external interventions designed in a way that allows research to be published. A major audience for the blogpost is those who design such programmes. The day to day experience of policymakers and practitioners in the low- and middle-income countries concerned is not with programmes.
Second, the focus on demarcation. At the outset, Jukes and Norman say that “SEL programs can improve children’s well-being, academic learning, can develop skills for a successful life and build resilience in the face of conflict and crisis. But these four sets of goals– and the approach one would take to achieve each of them– are quite different. Programs need to be clear about their main SEL goal. … Our focus is on SEL programs to improve academic learning.” Improving academic learning is clearly an important goal for all policymakers, but is this really distinct from the other options, or is that only in terms of designing research?
Is not the logical conclusion that given the importance of TLMs in a low resource system, research also needs to study whether new kinds of TLMs can make a difference? How difficult would that be? The only measurement then needed would be a well designed measure of academic outcomes. For example, a reading test that reflects the design of PIRLS, rather than low level tests of recall.
Jukes and Norman say that “In program design and evidence reviews, the broad term ‘SEL programs’ is used frequently. We can advance the field by seeking greater clarity about four aspects of SEL programs.” To which one might respond:
• Who is doing the designing?
• Who is using the term SEL programs frequently?
• What field is being advanced: the field of programme design and interventions or the field of student learning and well-being?
Even if measures are taken to improve school climate and support belonging and inclusion at school level, the experience of children during classes may be at odds with school-level messaging and practice.
In a linked paper, Jukes and Norman present a table headed “SEL approaches and interventions”, which refers mainly to interventions designed by external agencies. It would be good to see more attention to country-initiated initiatives, such as Ana Aqra in Lebanon, where “teachers’ positive attitudes towards the students included listening to their opinions, appreciating their work, and providing them with safe spaces to think critically. This had a positive effect on students, improving their self-confidence and self-esteem, and enhancing their inquiry, reasoning and social skills. Teachers also became more democratic and appreciative of children’s inputs, having witnessed the positive results. This is rooted in subjects but goes much wider. The same Ana Aqra paper describes how “Reading becomes a tool rather than an end in itself. Proficiency in reading allows children to learn better about anything and everything, from languages to math to knowing about the world around them.”
This is how Mary Helen Immordino-Yang also describes it: “Learning happens, but learning is serving a bigger aim, and that’s always the case. Why are you learning these things? How is the experience of learning this, whatever it is, changing what you’re capable of thinking like, and being like into the future? How is it changing your development? And that is the key thing. So, what we really need to refocus around, I think, in the design of schooling, is the development of the people in the system, and then the learning follows that.”
In their table, the authors present a typology of interventions because “for some multicomponent programs, it is hard to attribute improvements in outcomes to the SEL components of the intervention”. The nature of research and programmes requires drawing boundaries.
The three categories of the typology are:
• SEL instruction integrated into pedagogy
• Student-focus lessons and activities
• Learning climate programmes
However, the widespread influence of curriculum and classroom practice on the whole school climate means the three categories very much overlap. Good teaching and learning materials blend the explicit with the implicit and include aspects of school climate within both content and pedagogy. The category of “integrating SEL instruction into pedagogy” looks at how teachers add such instruction to the existing curriculum programmes rather than how it is embedded into classroom practice by the curriculum programme itself. Jukes and Norman give an example of the potential for “engaging students in social learning through play and shared work and pedagogy that connects content to children’s lives and experiences”. However, this is unlikely when the time and focus in class is entirely spent on the curricular programme.
The second part of the blogpost is headed “Assess the added value of SEL programs”. Although their forthcoming paper (linked in the blogpost) lists studies that have sought to assess the added value, I wonder how different is a call for “stronger evidence showing a clear link between SEL programs and academic outcomes” from a call that others have made for stronger evidence showing a clear link between textbook quality and academic outcomes, an aim that has been extremely difficult to achieve in any contexts, whether high- or low-resource systems. Many countries claim to define textbook quality through evaluation and approval systems. It is a highly imperfect process.
The assessment of quality is greatly conditioned by the starting point for the assessment, which begs the question: what kinds of outcome do we seek? In Immordino-Yang’s words, “Why are you learning these things?”
May I suggest that to the appeal the authors make in the final sentence of their excellent blogpost, we might add the following: “To ensure that social and emotional learning dimensions truly benefit children in low- and middle-income countries, we need more studies of new kinds of syllabuses and teaching and learning materials to understand what works better in particular contexts”.