July 19-21, 2018 | CNRS Descartes, Paris, France

Promoting peace and sustainable development through education is one of UNESCO’s core missions, also enshrined in The United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 4.7. The pursuit of SDG 4.7 requires that education systems help develop knowledge and skills necessary to foster mutual understanding, respect and care among all people and for the planet we share, and to engage responsibly and creatively with the changing world. Driven by this mandate, UNESCO MGIEP is drawing from recent neuroscience research that provides robust evidence that the rational and emotional parts of the human brain together shape human development, and has thus committed to achieving SDG 4.7 through social and emotional learning (SEL). 

While there is a proliferation of policy and guidance documents on SEL by organisations such as the OECD, The World Bank, UNESCO, and the Brookings Institution, CASEL, a lack of consensus on the objectives of SEL as well as on taxonomy underpinning the various SEL frameworks calls for a common framework on the set of competencies that must form the backbone of designing scientifically credible, evidence-based and culturally relevant SEL programming. In this pursuit, UNESCO MGIEP is developing a “State of SEL” Assessment report, the broad goal of which is to provide a scientifically credible and culturally appropriate basis for governments and educators at all levels to develop SEL policies and practices. 

As a first step, UNESCO MGIEP organised the Second Futures’ Workshop, held at La Sorbonne University, Paris between July 19-21, 2018, bringing together an expert group comprising of representatives of different disciplines, including neuroscience, human development psychology, anthropology, and education.

The themes discussed were evidence-based practices for SEL implementation in education, and the commitment to bring nuanced cultural contextualisation to the implementation of SEL programming in schools.

The outcomes of the “State of SEL” Assessment report were articulated as follows: (a) to review, clarify and connect the various frameworks and nomenclature of SEL in order to generate a coherent SEL taxonomy that is agnostic to brand and sensitive to socio-cultural and developmental contexts; and (b) to identify the factors contributing to implementation successes in SEL in order to create greater precision, transparency and facilitate more effective translation between research, practice, and policy.

Following the development of this unified SEL taxonomy, UNESCO MGIEP will then conduct a cross-country review which will look at how social and emotional skills are approached in formal education settings in countries in the Asia-Pacific region. 

For more information about the “State of SEL” Assessment, please contact Dr. Nandini Chatterjee Singh (n.chatterjee@unesco.org) or Vrinda Loiwal (v.loiwal@unesco.org).