Learning

When students return to education, they may feel fear or anxiety regarding the pandemic. Educators will need to deploy existing skills in new ways and/or develop new skills to overcome such adversity and continue to thrive.

Across the globe, students do not always attend school in a safe setting, and many experience unacceptably high rates of school-related gender-based violence (SRGBV).

More than 263 million children are out of school around the world, oftentimes due to poverty and conflict. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), as in many other countries, Accelerated Education Programs are becoming a more common approach.

The first three principles of the Accelerated Education: 10 Principles for Effective Practice focus on creating a flexible, inclusive environment for every student to help achieve the program’s goals.

While social and emotional learning is important for all children and youth, for those in conflict and crisis, it is critical. Research from the developed world and emerging evidence in crisis-affected countries demonstrates that the harmful effects of toxic stress can be stopped or even reversed when children are exposed to safe and predictable learning environments, and actively participate in explicit social-emotional learning (SEL) activities.

Evaluating programs can help us learn from them and design better ones; recently the Office of Education took this spirit farther and evaluated its evaluations.

SEL adds to the lives of individuals and communities in many ways, from combating toxic stress to academic achievement to strong economic returns.

In 32 conflict-affected countries alone, 21.5 million children, 15 million adolescents, and 26 million youth are out of school. Millions more have had their education disrupted by disasters, crime and violence. Achieving results in these challenging environments calls for innovative approaches to the design, management, and evaluation of education programs.