An empirical investigation of social emotional learning among children in primary education: The case of Catch Up in Zambia (2023)

To tackle the learning crisis, the government of Zambia introduced the Catch Up program, using the Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) approach. The goal of Catch Up is to increase literacy and numeracy skills among grade 3–5 learners through grouping learners by learning level (not age), using an accelerated learning methodology and regularly measuring learning progress. Continuous professional development of school leaders and senior teachers in methods of tailored instruction is an essential component of the success of the Catch Up program. It is hypothesised that Catch Up may stimulate socioemotional learning (SEL) in addition to increasing literacy and numeracy skills. The TaRL classroom methodology includes several play-based components: the classes are joyful, socially interactive, iterative, and meaningful and the activities are designed to build confidence and are highly engaging. The promotion of accelerated learning with characteristics of play has the potential to contribute significantly to SEL (Ljubetic et al.,2020; Hromek & Roffey, 2009). This article presents preliminary findings from a research study conducted in Lusaka and Central provinces in 2022 and indicates that the Catch Up program contributed to the development of two fundamental SEL domains, empathy and conflict resolution, in participants. Positive but not significant moments were also identified in stress management. Another important finding was that in both empathy and conflict resolution, including stress management domains, community schools performed better than government schools.

Corrigendum:

On page 9, the sentence “Our analysis was conducted using a difference-in-difference analysis using multi-level regression, with baseline and endline studies conducted to capture the impact of the programme” should be replaced with “Our analysis was conducted using a pre- and post-analysis using treatment effect models for observation data.” Figure 1 on page 7 of the brief, as well as all references to this figure, should be disregarded.