Testing the impact of a skill-targeted social and emotional learning curriculum and its variation by pre- and postmigration conflict experiences: A cluster randomized trial with Syrian refugee children in Lebanon.

Abstract

Social and emotional learning (SEL) programs are increasingly embraced by the global humanitarian sector as a potential strategy for supporting refugee children's psychosocial adaptation and learning. However, little evidence is available on the effectiveness of such SEL programs in humanitarian settings. Even less is known about whether such SEL programs can be equally effective, more beneficial, or even harmful, for children who were exposed to higher levels of conflict, in the context of war and/or postmigration settings. This study evaluates the effectiveness of a universal, multicomponent, skill-targeted SEL curriculum embedded in nonformal remedial education programming, the Five-Component SEL (5CSEL), for improving 20 proximal and distal outcomes. The large-scale cluster randomized controlled trial was conducted in 57 community sites (170 classrooms) in Lebanon with 4,289 Syrian refugee children (Mage = 9.16, SD = 2.34; 50% female). It examined both the impact of 5CSEL and the impact variation by children's level of exposure to war violence, family conflict, and school victimization. The findings do not provide conclusive evidence of the effectiveness of 5CSEL. However, we find promising signs of impacts in a number of the outcomes (effect sizes = 0.06–0.18 SD), suggesting the malleability of refugee children's SEL skills across multiple domains when given sufficient, targeted, and comprehensive support. Finally, we find little evidence of variation in impact by the level of exposure to conflict experiences, supporting the arguments for the benefits of universal SEL programming. These results provide promising directions for practitioner communities to invest in further development and revision of the SEL program contents and strategies.

Pedagogía diferencial: personas migrantes y refugiadas

“…La pedagogía diferencial como disciplina científica reflexiona sobre cómo actuar desde el sistema educativo, en sentido amplio para lograr una educación de calidad para todos que conjugue la excelencia y la equidad desde la diversidad (Jiménez y González, 2011, p.2.). Kim et al, (2023) han destacado que los programas de aprendizaje social y emocional (SEL) se han convertido en una estrategia para apoyar la adaptación psicosocial y la educación de los niños y niñas refugiados. Estos programas están siendo cada vez más aceptados por el sector humanitario en todo el mundo.…”

Measuring the dosage of brief and skill-targeted social-emotional learning (SEL) activities in humanitarian settings

“…Although these features allow the implementation of the program to be field-feasible, the drawback to this approach is that there are likely as many specific versions of the program as teachers due to the variations in actual quantity, duration, and repetition patterns of the implemented activities. As a result, it is unclear what aspects of this implementation approach enable the SEL programming to be more beneficial to children’s SEL development, if at all ( Kim et al, in press ).…”