Journal on Education in Emergencies: Volume 7, Number 2

JEiE Vol 7 No 2 cover
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The JEiE Special Issue on Psychosocial Support and Social and Emotional Learning in Emergencies offers a snapshot of the strategies and tools being developed and used to understand the status of wellbeing and psychosocial support in humanitarian contexts and the effectiveness of EiE programming that incorporates PSS and SEL principles. This issue presents evidence of the progress being made in creating, validating, and using new, culturally relevant measures of mental health and wellbeing among students living in situations of crisis and conflict, and among the teachers, caregivers, and community members on whom these young people rely. 

JEiE Volume 7, Number 2 includes six research articles, three field notes, two book reviews, and one commentary. The authors who contributed to this issue work at 30 institutions based in more than 12 countries. Together they advance our understanding of how psychological health, emotional wellbeing, social cohesion, and education are linked. They also reinforce the notion that schools are important sites for protecting children from the emotional trauma and psychological harm wrought by conflict and crisis. Schools can offer students a sense of stability, dignity, accomplishment, and hope in their daily lives, provide nurturing care and opportunities for play, and serve as a staging ground for the provision of services and resources, including mental health resources.

The full issue of JEiE Volume 7, Number 2, as well as individual articles, can be downloaded by clicking on the titles below.

 

CCThe Journal on Education in Emergencies, published by the Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE), is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

16 Dezembro 2021 Research Publication Journal on Education in Emergencies (JEiE)

Journal on Education in Emergencies: Volume 7, Number 2

This special issue of JEiE contributes to the evidence for the need to incorporate PSS and SEL programming into EiE responses. It presents examples of the progress being made toward developing, validating, and using new, culturally relevant tools for measuring mental health and wellbeing among students experiencing crisis and conflict, and the teachers, parents, and caregivers who support them.

16 Dezembro 2021 Journal Article Journal on Education in Emergencies (JEiE)

Developing and Validating the International Social and Emotional Learning Assessment: Evidence from a Pilot Test with Syrian Refugee Children in Iraq

Noting the dearth of robust tools for assessing SEL skills in low-resource and crisis settings, authors Nikhit D’Sa and Allyson Krupar developed a cost-free, open-source measure of self-concept, stress management, perseverance, empathy, and conflict resolution. The measure showed reliability and strong internal consistency in a validation study among 620 Syrian children living in Iraq.

16 Dezembro 2021 Journal Article Journal on Education in Emergencies (JEiE)

Teachers’ Observations of Learners’ Social and Emotional Learning: Psychometric Evidence for Program Evaluation in Education in Emergencies

Authors Ha Yeon Kim, Kalina Gjicali, Zezhen Wu, and Carly Tubbs Dolan report on the psychometric soundness of TOOLSEL, an instrument for teachers to use to assess students’ social, emotional, behavioral, and cognitive competencies. They share lessons for its use in the field, based on their experience validating it among 3,361 Syrian refugee youth living in Lebanon.

16 Dezembro 2021 Journal Article Journal on Education in Emergencies (JEiE)

Creating a Tool to Measure Children’s Wellbeing: A PSS Intervention in South Sudan

Authors Moses Olayemi, Melissa Tucker, Mamour Choul, Tom Purekal, Arlene Benitez, Wendy Wheaton, and Jennifer DeBoer collaborated with NGOs and educators to determine the core wellbeing and resilience domains for evaluating a PSS intervention and key local nuances. Their efforts resulted in an instrument that the authors found to be relevant among a sample of students and teachers in South Sudan.

16 Dezembro 2021 Journal Article Journal on Education in Emergencies (JEiE)

How Do We Know If Teachers Are Well? The Wellbeing Holistic Assessment for Teachers Tool

Authors Fernanda Soares, Nina Menezes Cunha, and Paul Frisoli discuss how they created a new tool for measuring teachers’ emotion regulation, perceived stress, emotional exhaustion, and self-efficacy and adapted it to the Salvadoran context. A psychometric factor analysis of data from a sample of 1,659 teachers indicate evidence of the tool’s validity.

16 Dezembro 2021 Journal Article Journal on Education in Emergencies (JEiE)

Evaluating the 3Cs Program for Caregivers of Young Children Affected by the Armed Conflict in Colombia

Authors Lina María González Ballesteros, José M. Flores, Ana María Ortiz Hoyos, Amalia Londoño Tobón, Sascha Hein, Felipe Bolívar Rincon, Oscar Gómez, and Liliana Angélica Ponguta highlight the impact of an innovative skills-building and psychotherapy program. They show that it improved resiliency among parents and caregivers in 14 municipalities most affected by the armed conflict in Colombia.

16 Dezembro 2021 Journal Article Journal on Education in Emergencies (JEiE)

How Family Relationships Predict the Effectiveness of a Psychosocial Group Intervention among War-Affected Children

Taking a family systems approach, authors Raija-Leena Punamäki, Kirsi Peltonen, Marwan Diab, and Samir R Qouta find that child-parent attachment, parenting styles, and sibling relationships may mediate the perceived benefit of a group therapy program among a sample of children from 325 Palestinian families. They base their findings on family-type data and self-reported PTSD and mental health data.

16 Dezembro 2021 Journal Article Journal on Education in Emergencies (JEiE)

Field Note: Using a Participatory Approach to Create SEL Programming: The Case of Ahlan Simsim

Authors Shanna Kohn, Kim Foulds, Charlotte Cole, Mackenzie Matthews, and Laila Hussein argue for the need to take a participatory, trauma-informed approach to creating SEL educational media for children affected by the Syrian refugee crisis. They reflect on the collaborative research and consultations that led to Sesame’s Ahlan Simsim production and associated direct support services.

16 Dezembro 2021 Journal Article Journal on Education in Emergencies (JEiE)

Field Note: Developing a Culturally Relevant Measure of Resilience for War-Affected Adolescents in Eastern Ukraine

In developing and testing a new instrument, Sergiy Bogdanov and his coauthors offer evidence suggesting that family support, optimism, persistence, health, and social networking are key local concepts for understanding resilience among youth in Eastern Ukraine who experienced the adverse effects of armed conflict.

16 Dezembro 2021 Journal Article Journal on Education in Emergencies (JEiE)

Field Note: Developing the Group Facilitation Assessment of Competencies Tool for Group-Based Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Interventions in Humanitarian and Low-Resource Settings

Arguing the practicality of group-based psychotherapy approaches for humanitarian settings, authors Gloria A. Pedersen, Manaswi Sangraula, Pragya Shrestha, Pooja Lakshmin, Alison Schafer, Renasha Ghimire, Nagendra P. Luitel, Mark J. D. Jordans, and Brandon A. Kohrt describe GroupACT, an observational tool for assessing facilitators’ capacity to provide effective and safe group sessions.

16 Dezembro 2021 Journal Article Journal on Education in Emergencies (JEiE)

Book Review: Can Big Bird Fight Terrorism? Children’s Television and Globalized Multicultural Education by Naomi A. Moland

In her review of Can Big Bird Fight Terrorism? Children’s Television and Globalized Multicultural Education by Naomi A. Moland, Kate Lapham reflects on the contradictions and pitfalls facing educational media in highly divided societies.

16 Dezembro 2021 Journal Article Journal on Education in Emergencies (JEiE)

Book Review: NISSEM Global Briefs: Educating for the Social, the Emotional and the Sustainable, edited by Andy Smart, Margaret Sinclair, Aaron Benavot, Jean Bernard, Colette Chabbott, S. Garnett Russell, and James Williams

In her review of the NISSEM Global Briefs, edited by Andy Smart, Margaret Sinclair, Aaron Benavot, Jean Bernard, Colette Chabbott, S. Garnett Russell, and James Williams, Solfrid Raknes points to the practical lessons the book’s contributing authors provide for incorporating SEL principles into classroom practice and education research.

16 Dezembro 2021 Journal Article Journal on Education in Emergencies (JEiE)

Commentary: How the Education in Emergencies Field Can Help the United States Respond to COVID-19

In this commentary, authors Rebecca Winthrop and Helen Shwe Hadani reflect on the social and psychological toll the COVID-19 pandemic has taken on students, including those in high-income countries, as school closures deprive children of opportunities to play and form vital early relationships with classmates and teachers.