UNESCO - United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
UNESCO - United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
10/08/2024 | News release | Distributed by Public on 10/08/2024 12:16
UNESCO trains a hundred teachers from Latin America and the Caribbean in socio-emotional skills
During August and September 2024, UNESCO's Latin American Laboratory for the Assessment of the Quality of Education (LLECE) held in-depth workshops aimed at teachers, based on the contents of its publication Aportes para la enseñanza de habilidades socioemocionales, which was released in July 2024.
The training sessions brought together nearly 150 teachers from the region, providing them with a space to work on strategies and activities to strengthen socio-emotional learning in classrooms. Participants engaged in both theoretical and practical reviews of the UNESCO document, which explores the findings of the Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study (ERCE 2019) on skills such as empathy, self-regulation, and openness to diversity-assessed for the first time in 2019.
"These workshops were designed specifically to bring this topic closer to schools in Latin America and the Caribbean, which are key spaces for the socio-emotional learning of children and adolescents. In that regard, we wanted to provide content that resonates with teachers, guiding and supporting them in creating strategies that contribute to the explicit teaching of these skills, thus helping UNESCO promote the holistic development of students," explained Carlos Henríquez, coordinator of the LLECE Laboratory.
Representatives from educational communities across Latin America and the Caribbean also participated in the six training sessions, sharing their insights at the conclusion of the workshops organised by LLECE.
Voices from the region
"I was interested in taking part in this workshop after my first encounter with the document published by UNESCO on this topic, a resource I found valuable and enriching due to its practical and contextualised content. It includes concrete proposals for different activities to teach socio-emotional skills," said Gabriel Olivares, School Coexistence Coordinator at Villa San Miguel Primary School in Santiago, Chile.
"I am convinced that a teacher who understands that school is not just about knowledge, but above all about skills for coexistence, will be better able to make use of these suggested resources and also create new ones," stated Sara López, Head of the Department of Monitoring and Evaluation at the National Institute for Educational Evaluation (INEE) of the Ministry of Education and Sciences of Paraguay.
"Accompanying children in the process of understanding their socio-emotional skills, their relationships with those around them, and reflecting on how these emotions are managed are essential elements to consider if we want to educate individuals from a holistic perspective," explained Angelina Gajardo, Director of Evaluation at the MIDE Institute and ChanGo Foundation, Ecuador.