January 2021 Newsletter
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Welcome to the Karanga Newsletter. We hope that wherever you are reading this, you are safe and well. 2020 was a challenging year for almost everyone. It was a time of convergent crises that included the global pandemic, the climate crisis, the struggle for racial justice, the polarization of societies, and a global learning crisis.
Social and emotional learning (SEL) is a legitimate part of the response to all of these crises. It is a component of education needs during and beyond the pandemic. It is an approach for developing behaviors that can help us address the climate crisis and structural racial inequality. It is a component of fairer, more compassionate societies in the future.
Last year, there was a point when it felt as though SEL was at the center of many education reform conversations, but these did not convert into an increase in new SEL oriented policies. If anything, the progress made with SEL reversed, as school systems, very understandably, opted to focus on more traditional components of schools' purpose that could be more easily delivered remotely. The chart below shows the number of global social media mentions of "Social Emotional Learning," "Social and Emotional Learning," and "#SEL" month by month throughout 2020. Social media mentions are at best a crude proxy indicator for the importance attached to an idea. Still, it is nevertheless indicative of a discernible trend where interest in SEL declined as the year wore on.
In 2021, Karanga is keen to focus on sustaining and increasing SEL interest and converting it into policy reform. As always, we welcome your ideas as to how we can achieve that.
GLOBAL LEADERSHIP SERIES
On January 14, we held the first SEL Global Leadership Roundtable of the year and heard from Marjo Kyllönen (Head, Education Development Services, Helsinki, Finland) and Michele Giroux (Executive Officer, Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, Ottawa, Canada). They talked about why their education systems participated in the OECD Study on Social and Emotional Skills and what they learned SEL while participating.
The OECD Study on Social and Emotional Skills is an international survey that identifies and assesses the conditions and practices that foster or hinder the development of social and emotional skills for 10- and 15-year-old students. Cities in Canada, the USA, Colombia, Portugal, Finland, Turkey, Russia, South Korea, and China participated in the first study. Results will be available later this year. The publication of the study will unquestionably be one of the most significant SEL events of the year.
All of the 2020 conversations in the SEL Global Leadership series are available to watch on Karanga's YouTube channel.
WINNING OR LEARNING, NEVER LOSING
Being away from school had - and has - a severe impact on students in learning, their school performance, and social and emotional development. Being without school makes it worse. All children and young people have been suffering from this, but the damage is more serious for some: for those in a situation of greater social and school vulnerability (Barómetro COVID-19; HundrED & OCDE, 2020).
At this historic moment, taking firm steps in the commitment to equity is imperative. Together with Teach for Portugal and other partners, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation launched the Gulbenkian Learning project. This initiative aims to support at least 5,000 primary and secondary school students, offering 1,000 mentorship hours per week in 120 deprived schools flagged by the Ministry of Education. The aim is twofold: to recover from the learning loss in language (Portuguese), foreign language (English), and mathematics, and to develop relevant socioemotional skills for autonomous learning (e.g., motivation for learning, self-regulation, resilience), raising expectations for all following the wise Nelson Mandela's statement: "I never lose. I either win or learn."
LEVERAGING THE ARTS
Exciting news from another steering committee organization! Slam Out Loud's art-based intervention for student well-being and socio-emotional learning has been selected as a case study for OECD and the World Bank's joint initiative mapping some of the best and most innovative education continuity stories across the world! Their work on leveraging arts has also been spotlighted by organizations including, WISE, Qatar Foundationand UNESCO MGIEP.
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NEW CEO AT COMMITTEE FOR CHILDREN
Committee for Children, the global leader in research-based social-emotional learning (SEL), has appointed Andrea Lovanhill as CEO. Committee for Children has been part of Karanga since we started, and we would like to extend our congratulations to Andrea. We are looking forward to working with Andrea and her colleagues in the years ahead. More information about Andrea's appointment is available here.
ADDRESSING GAPS IN SEL ASSESSMENT
Steering Committee member Carmel Cefai has co-authored a major new report for the Network of Experts Working on the Social Dimension of Education and Training (NESET). The report addresses the gap in the formative assessment of social and emotional education. It also presents a framework of guiding principles for the formative assessment of social and emotional education within the EU. It provides various tools that may formatively assess social and emotional education at the levels of the individual learner, classroom climate and whole-school system. The report is free to download here.
A BETTER WORLD THROUGH DIGNITY
Global Dignity is an 80-country-strong community of leaders, teachers, and volunteers working to strengthen a sense of our shared humanity. The organization's Teaching Dignity curriculum helps children and young people recognize their own inherent dignity and the equal dignity of every other person. Dignity Workshops, which take place in schools, youth groups, refugee camps, workplaces, and virtually, focus on mutual understanding as an antidote to hate and intolerance. The Teaching Dignity curriculum and workshop guides are free and available here.
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
"Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive."
- Dalai Lama
Karanga is an alliance of individuals and organizations committed to supporting social and emotional learning programs within formal and non-formal education. Karanga's vision is of a thriving world where all learners are enabled with the skills to succeed in school, work, and life.