ECD Social and Emotional Learning Toolkit Consultant

Organisational Background

Founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises and helps people affected by war or disaster to survive and rebuild their lives. We commit to stay as long as we are needed, helping survivors to heal, recover and rebuild their communities to be stronger, more stable and more democratic. At work today in over 40 countries and 22 U.S. cities, we restore safety, dignity and hope to millions who are uprooted and struggling to endure. Building local capacity and self-sufficiency—and promoting human rights, participation and accountability—are at the core of all of our innovative programs. The IRC leads the way from harm to home.

Project Background

Ahlan Simsim: Children and their families living in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria have been exposed to levels of adversity that threaten their development and jeopardize the future prosperity and stability of the societies in which they live. Research shows that the development of basic skills can help promote resiliency and, for the most vulnerable children, help mitigate the negative effects of conflict and crisis. But such care and education are unavailable to many children. Ahlan Simsim’s theory of change is based on the idea that Sesame Workshop’s signature culturally relevant, localized production approach, with its engaging Muppets and other elements, coupled with the International Rescue Committee’s (IRC’s) expertise in delivering services to people affected by conflict and crisis, will enable the creation of a scalable, replicable intervention for early childhood programming to help a generation of conflict-affected children achieve their developmental potential.

The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), an internationally renowned leader in the field of education, defines social emotional learning as “the process of acquiring core competencies to recognize and manage emotions, set and achieve goals, appreciate the perspectives of others, establishandmaintainpositiverelationships, make responsible decisions, and handle interpersonal situations constructively.” Socio-emotional learning helps children build the skills critical to resilience, healing, and coping with long-term exposure to trauma. It can also enhance outcomes of academic education by providing children with tools to help them focus, regulate their emotions, and cope with stress.

Supporting children’s social–emotional development at an early age builds a solid foundation for their future, preparing children to successfully manage their emotions and behaviors, establish caring relationships with others, follow limits and expectations, and interact in groups. Studies show an increase in student achievement data for children who learn social–emotional skills in their early childhood programs compared to children who do not receive this support. Explicitly teaching social and emotional skills can help students become more resilient, which helps them deal with the effects of trauma or adverse events in their lives. These positive effects last well beyond a single school year. Some research has even shown that teaching social and emotional skills leads to better academic achievement and improved behavior.

Beyond the important goal of meeting immediate urgent needs of young children, Ahlan Simsim aims to change the systems that govern provision of ECD services ensuring what services they provide and how they provide them reach children with high quality programming, include refugees and the most vulnerable. This is achieved through a focus on creating strong local partnerships for quality, reach and sustainability, grounding the work in a system strengthening approach to local ownership. Joint advocacy institutionalizes the scaling outcomes in government policies ensuring we are serving communities beyond the lifetime of the project.All are vital to the core Ahlan Simsim outcome of sustained improvements in children’s lives, towards addressing the denominator of the problem to meet the need at scale.

This consultancy aims to work closely with the Ministry of Education to develop a neuroscience-informed Social and Emotional Learning Toolkit and ensuring that the process and outputs are contextualized to fit the needs and capacities of the MoE.

Consultancy Purpose

There are two purposes for this consultancy, the consultant shall achieve the following overall tasks:

1. to develop a SEL classroom activities bank for teachers that cover the five main AS competencies

oConduct an In-depth review of available on the available evidence surrounding elementary-level SEL programs (regionally and globally) based on program design, effectiveness, and key mechanisms in SEL intervention that impact student outcomes.

oConduct focus group discussions with teachers to understand their day-to-day experiences in the classroom, teaching practices, teaching and classroom management gaps and opportunities for integration of SEL components.

oConduct key informant interviews with the classroom teachers from the MoE technical committee to gather information on past and current efforts in SEL, curriculum structure and tools for SEL and national-level data on classroom practices.

oConduct field visits to a group of elementary classrooms to learn more about the classroom environment and the needs of teachers as well as children’s SEL needs.

oDraft the assessment report (deliverable 1) that outlines the main findings, learnings, and recommendations based on the desk review, including the details of the methodology and a detailed action plan, to be presented to and approved by the MoE. The proposed methodology needs to be contextualized to capture all agreed ingredients necessary for development of the learning and development framework and the activities bank.

oDevelop a tailored SEL classroom activities bank (deliverable 2) for teachers that cover the five main AS competencies, add clear description as well as means of verifications to the activities bank and ensure to embed these skills in classroom practices and main topics such as math, language and science.

oPresent the activities bank to the MoE technical committee to collect their feedback and reflections and amend accordingly.

oPilot the developed activities bank in number of classrooms (deliverable 3) to ensure they are contextualized and can be easily applied.

oGenerate learnings from the pilot and adapt the toolkit accordingly.

2. to build the capacity of a core team from the MoE on SEL theory and practice.

oBuild the capacity of the MoE technical committee on teachers’ training for SEL (deliverable 4) that includes the why and how to integrate SEL in the classroom with a strong emphasis on translating the theories into practices in the classroom.

oCo-develop with the MoE technical team part of the activities bank as practical implementation of the training material and integrate into MoE’s storybooks.

oDesign with the MoE technical team classroom monitoring tools (deliverable 5) to monitor the results and effectiveness of the activities bank developed (dosage versus children SE skills improvement).

oFacilitate consultation meetings/workshops throughout the process to support the deliverables review and validation process.

oPrepare reports on validation workshops, final report on the assignment, other brief progress reports as required

oMoE and IRC will organize the workshops and cover cost of participants. The consultant will be responsible for technical inputs and facilitation of workshops.

All deliverables will be submitted in Arabic language