The 21st century is often described as an age of unprecedented change and uncertainty related to technological evolution and climate change. Moreover, the changing landscape of classrooms and learning owing to the COVID-19 pandemic add to this. The SEL thematic supplement was created in response to these challenges for Aflatoun's diverse partners implementing our core curricula.
To address 21st century needs of children and young people worldwide, Aflatoun’s network of 350 partners across 108 countries were consulted in the development of the supplement. Especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, we wanted to determine the needs of the participants of Aflatoun core programme. This guided the curriculum development process to tailor the SEL knowledge, skills, and mindsets and the approaches suggested in the curriculum.
The SEL supplement relies on a learner-centered pedagogy characterized by active-learning methods, which promotes a range of competencies; combinations of attitudes, skills, and knowledge that children and young people develop and apply for successful learning and living (essentially higher-order thinking skills and soft skills). We are buoyed in our belief by the growing volume of research demonstrating the efficiency of such a pedagogy as evidenced by enhanced learning outcomes.
The SEL supplement was adapted from Aflatoun’s social-emotional aspects of learning curriculum developed for the Pathways to Whole School Development project in Uganda in 2019. Our partners, PEDN and OIUK played a key role in the implementation in 10 districts with a total of 2369 students. The impact evaluation showed that there was significant growth in three of the five SEL competencies among the participants at the end of the programme. The SEL thematic was developed in 2020 as a supplementary curriculum that can be used by the Aflatoun partner network and was made available in 5 languages (Arabic, Russian, Spanish, French, English). In the next 2-3 years, our goal is to strengthen the SEL curricula based on insights from evaluation and incorporate learnings in our core curricula.
The SEL thematic supplement is currently available for all network partners. If you would like to adopt this in your organization, it can be contextualized and localized to meet your needs. Furthermore, due to the modular approach of our curricula, it can be integrated into other curricular areas. For more information contact info@aflatoun.org.
