Strengthening social-emotional skills is more important than ever due to the pandemic, an expert explains.
85% of students in Latin America and the Caribbean consider that they have a positive attitude towards people of origin and culture different from their own.
This is one of the conclusions of the report recently released by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco), which measured the socio-emotional skills of 6th grade primary school students in more than 4,000 schools in the region.
It is the first time that these types of skills are measured on a large scale at the Latin American level..
“It is a first great effort with the countries to place socio-emotional skills in the same position as knowledge skills,” Carlos Henríquez, coordinator of the UNESCO Latin American Laboratory for the Evaluation of the Quality of Education (LLECE), told BBC Mundo. made the report.
“I believe that this is a tremendous signal, not only educational, but educational policy, of how in the region we prioritize the comprehensive development of students.”
Socio-emotional skills were measured in 16 Latin American countries based on questionnaires, and were part of the tests ERCE 2019 which also evaluated performance in the areas of reading, mathematics and science.
The results in those disciplines had already been disclosed in November.
Claudia Uribe, director of the UNESCO Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean, Orealc/Unesco, pointed out: “The skills measured by the ERCE 2019 are part of a set of socio-emotional skills that we now know are essential for personal development and for performance and coexistence at school and in all other areas of life.
What social-emotional skills were measured
Of the many socio-emotional skills, UNESCO chose three.
1. Openness to diversity
“It is the degree to which students perceive that they are capable of accepting, tolerating or establishing bonds with those who are different, different from them,” explained Henríquez.
Openness to diversity “is the degree to which students perceive that they are capable of accepting, tolerating or establishing bonds with those who are different from them,” he added.
The majority of the students responded “I would like a little” or “I would like a lot” to questions such as the following: “If students from another country came to your course, how would you feel?”; “If a student who has a disability (for example, blind, deaf or needs a wheelchair) came to your class, how would you feel?”; or “If a student with a different skin color from yours came to your class, how would you feel?”
The responses of the different participating countries were similar in this skill, with the exception of Cuba and Costa Rica that had a higher percentage of positive responses (Cuba 93% and Costa Rica 92%).
2. School self-regulation
In this case, the aim was to measure the children’s ability to regulate their emotions, thoughts and behaviors during learning. 74% of the answers were positive in the regional average.
The majority of the students responded “several times” or “almost always or always” to situations such as the following: “I follow the rules of the class, even though the teacher is not looking at me”; “I ask the teacher for help when I don’t understand what to do.”
Self-regulation also includes the ability to persevere toward a goal and delay gratification. Hernández explained that these qualities were measured through situations such as “before handing in a task or an exercise, I review it well”, “before I start playing, I finish studying”, “although a task is difficult for me, I continue working on her” and “even if things don’t work out for me, I keep trying”.
While the variation in responses across countries is small, Cuban students reported higher levels of school self-regulation (87% positive responses), while students from Brazil reported lower levels (57% positive responses).
3. Empathy
“It is a central element for the construction of citizenship and community,” said Henríquez, and it means “being able to put yourself in another’s place, recognize the other’s perspective and respect it.”
Empathy includes several elements, such as the ability to identify our own emotions in relation to others, recognize the emotions that other people are experiencing, interpret their intentions and have the ability to act or respond considering the emotions of others.
55% of the total responses were “several times” or “almost always or always” to situations such as “I feel sad when a classmate has no one to play with”, “I try to help a classmate in trouble, even if he is not my friend”, and others situations that require emotionally putting oneself in another’s shoes or understanding their point of view and acting in tune with what is happening to them.
what are the lessons
The questionnaires not only measured socioemotional skills, but also identified associated factors that influence their development.
One of them is the importance of preschool, since the children who had access to that initial education registered higher scores.
Another fundamental finding is how crucial it is that students perceive a genuine interest of teachers in supporting them.
This factor is “closely linked to what teachers do in the classroom, when they are attentive to students’ concerns, encouraging them, when teachers do that, better results are obtained.”
“It’s not that we’re asking the teacher, but we’re asking the students if ‘the teachers realize I’m worried about something’.”
“When there is an emotional connection it is very important, there is a matter of well-being.”
It is also important for the teacher to acknowledge student progress with specific, positive feedback.
The study also revealed that a climate of order in the classroom is relevant to the development of these skills.
Students who attend schools where there are higher levels of disruption (classrooms where students are interrupted when they intervene, where the teacher has difficulty starting the class and achieving silence, and where disorder prevails) report lower levels for the three skills .
The next step: “Bringing the data to the classroom”
The challenge now is for the ERCE 2019 findings to translate into changes in reality.
“What we want to do together with the countries in 2022 is to see how we bring this to the classroom,” said Henríquez.
“We have always said that evaluation is a means to a greater end, which is the well-being and learning of all students.”
For Henríquez, a great field in which countries can act is the training of teachers.
“Currently there is very little training for teachers to work on socio-emotional skills”, pointed out the coordinator of LLECE.
“What we have seen in conversations with teachers is that they say ‘I want to learn to recognize emotions to do it with my children’”.
The LLECE coordinator hopes that the pioneering report on socio-emotional skills will serve to determine “how we create better learning opportunities so that children have well-being, are happy, and are aware of the other, that they learn to live with those who think differently or are different ”.
“And also, I insist, build a better community, a country and a region for them. Not when they are 18 or 20 years old and formal citizens, but when they learn to resolve differences in the classroom, on the playground, in their space today so that they can develop their full potential.”
Claudia Uribe assured that strengthening socio-emotional skills is more important than ever due to the pandemic.
The director of Orealc/Unesco pointed out that “after the prolonged closure of schools, it is more urgent today than ever to give teachers tools so that they can accompany their students in their socio-emotional dimension, which has been strongly impacted by the pandemic. ”.
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