Scaling-Up of a Social Emotional Learning Curriculum in Uganda

Catalyzing Change in Education Through a Transformative Learning Collaborative: Scaling-Up of a Social Emotional Learning Curriculum in Uganda

Teachers' social emotional learning/competence (SEL/SEC) can influence teachers' ability in developing healthy teacher-student relationship, managing classroom, implementing evidence-based SEL promotion strategies in classroom, and supporting students' parents. Also, most SEL/SEC interventions have not considered gender equity. Given high prevalence of gender-based violence and high exposure to adverse environment for teachers in low income countries (LIC), which may lead them to greater risk for lower SEC, transforming current education system and considering gender equity and SEL/SEC promotion curriculum to both teachers and children is needed.

The goal of this project is to respond to this need by adapting a locally supported evidence-based-intervention (EBI) for children and further integrates SEL/SEC curriculum for teachers and gender equity component. The EBI to be adapted in this study is ParentCorps-Professional Development (PD), a school-based EBI that trains, empowers, and supports teachers to apply EBI strategies to promote child SEL/SEC and academic learning, and reduce behavioral problems. Two pilot implementation studies from prior work conducted in Uganda and Nepal have demonstrated feasibility, acceptability, usefulness, and efficacy of PD in diverse low resource contexts. PD has shown positive impacts on multiple-level, including positive changes on students' emotional regulation and social competency, teacher-student relationship, and classroom social emotion climate. The proposed research builds on prior positive evidence and further partner with policy and relevant stakeholders to integrate gender equity and teacher SEL/SEC curriculum into the PD (as the PD-Enhance) as well as to test scalable strategies to provide the enhanced PD curriculum at the system level.

Inclusion Criteria:

• The inclusion criteria for the school staff (teachers, head teachers) are: they must be in the recruited study schools and teaching in Pre-Primary to Primary 4 classrooms or holding the head teachers/administration leadership position in school. The inclusion criteria for Parent Leaders are: they must be at least 18 years old and have served as a Parent-Teacher-Association member or Parent Leader in the school for at least 1 year.
• The inclusion criteria for the PD program implementers are: they must have current employment with eligible partners (i.e., medical/mental health institutions, Teacher Training Colleges), with professional experiences in teacher training or mental health training.
• The inclusion criteria for parents are: caregivers must be at least 18 years old, their children must be enrolled in Pre-Primary or Primary 1 to 4 classes (or between 3 to 10 years old) in the recruited schools, and willing to have their child to be assessed by research staff. Parents and children will have diverse characteristics (e.g., randomly selected from school student lists). About 5% families will be randomly selected from the student lists. The proposed study will be open to both men and women caregivers.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Evidence of psychopathology or cognitive impairment severe enough to preclude giving consent, or completing the survey instruments or the focus group of the study.