Damascus-SANA
Some social media pages and websites interacted with the news that the Ministry of Education had allocated two lessons per week for emotional and social education in the next academic year, amid questions about the nature of this education and its goal, so that those concerned would clarify to SANA its axes, goals and expected outputs.
Director of the National Center for the Development of Educational Curricula, Dr. Nadia Al-Ghazouli, indicated that emotional and social education is a classroom activity that measures the learner’s performance, intelligence and positive personal development through four axes “life skills, projects, initiatives and vocational education” to enhance the learner’s personality and ability to communicate, take responsibility and make sound decisions, in addition to focusing on Teamwork through joint initiatives and projects with peers.
Al-Ghazouli pointed out that the center commissioned more than 25 psychological counselors and scientific coordinators of various specializations to write the curriculum for emotional and social education.
Emotional education is all about self-management of the student “problems, feelings and thoughts” according to psychological counselor Mervat Takla, member of the authoring committee. As for the social, it evaluates its communication with others and how to form healthy and positive relationships, which contributes to the formation of positive thoughts in the learner and the ability to solve all his problems in a correct and effective manner.
The curriculum for this type of education, according to Ghida Nuzha, coordinator of biology, focuses on enhancing participation between the family, the school, and the local community to form collaborative learning environments and human experiences, in addition to purposeful courses that include life skills such as the importance of self-awareness and self-management, and social awareness to enhance the learner’s understanding of the points of view. Others and managing social relationships.
Concerning the focus of the initiatives, Naboug Hamed Ayoub, coordinator of the music education subject at the center, explained that it aims to enable the student to put forward an idea to find a solution to a problem, whether in the classroom, school or in the surrounding community, develop his creativity, give him critical thinking skills, self-confidence, enhance personality, and deal with new steps through How to develop an action plan for it, achieve its goal, allocate the materials needed for it, set a timetable, implementation mechanism and evaluation tools.
Head of the Textbook Unit at the center, Taghreed Al-Azrouni, spoke about the projects side to discover and monitor the student's skills and tendencies, which do not appear in traditional teaching methods, noting that each project has its specifications according to the age, standards and actual performance indicators, and there will be self-evaluation, teacher evaluation, and school evaluation of his project.
On the professional education side, Eng. Munther Al-Khidr, the scientific coordinator of the agricultural education subject at the center, stated that it aims to train the student on practical skills for agriculture and introduce the types of crops to apply these skills in his land or home garden, for example, and transfer these experiences to the family and the surrounding community correctly and to familiarize him with the value of the product agricultural and its importance.
It is expected that the social and emotional learning, according to the member of the scientific unit in the Center, the Psychological Counselor, Suzan Asaad, will achieve a high level of self-efficacy in the student, a better sense of care from school and the community, an increase in positive social behaviors, an improvement in attendance, a decrease in absenteeism from school, and an improvement in mathematics, language and social studies skills. and increasing educational attainment over time.
Amer Deeb and Rehab Ali
