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Adolescent social and emotional learning in contexts of
conflict, fragility and peacebuilding
Sara Clarke-Habibi
Chapter in NISSEM Global Briefs: Educating for the social, the emotional and the sustainable. Section
2: Contextualising Social and Emotional Learning. Colette Chabbott, Margaret Sinclair & Andy Smart
(editors). Publication date: September 2019
Abstract
Social and emotional learning (SEL) plays an important role in the healthy development of young
people in every society, not least in countries made fragile by violent conflict. With many countries
currently destabilized by and emerging from conditions of conflict, questions remain about how to
best frame and approach SEL so that the social and emotional needs not only of individuals, but also
of communities and the society at large are met. Using data from 2012 to 2015, this study examines
how SEL for adolescents is approached in one post-conflict society, Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH).
Combining content analysis of 500 topics included in SEL syllabi from three ethnically distinct regions
with teacher interviews and student focus groups, the study reveals how BiH schools frame SEL
according to localized psychosocial and ethnopolitical priorities, inadvertently reinforcing
contradictory messages about self and others, relationships, community, decision-making and
peacebuilding. The case highlights risks associated with decentralized approaches to SEL within
politically sensitive contexts where learning may be instrumentalized to reinforce social divisions.
For SEL to contribute to both individual and collective wellbeing, country-level frameworks that are
holistic, inclusive, conflict-sensitive and critical are needed.
Keywords: adolescents, conflict, social-emotional learning, curriculum, peacebuilding
Introduction
While social and emotional learning (SEL) plays an important role in the healthy development of
young people in every society, it is especially important in countries made fragile by violent conflict.
With many countries currently destabilized by and emerging from conditions of conflict, questions
about how to best frame and approach SEL so that the social and emotional needs not only of
individuals, but also communities and the society at large, are met, are of critical importance.
CASEL (2017) defines social and emotional learning as the process through which children and adults
acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and
manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and
maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions’. Cefai, Bartolo, Cavioni, & Downes
(2018) provide a more elaborate definition, suggesting that the aim is to equip children and
adolescents with competences that ‘… enhance their ability to understand themselves and others, to
express and regulate their emotions, to develop healthy and caring relationships, to empathize and
collaborate with others, to resolve conflict constructively, to enable them to make good, responsible
and ethical decisions, and to overcome difficulties in social and academic tasks… More broadly, [SEL]
contributes to harmonious relationships, to social cohesion and inclusion in communities, to positive
attitudes towards individual and cultural diversity, and to equity and social justice (p. 8). Meanwhile,
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the OECD focuses on the healthy development of young people within the context and challenges of
a global society, identifying ‘the big 5’ skills (emotion regulation, collaboration, open-mindedness,
engaging with others, and task performance) ‘required by citizens to lead productive lives, make
informed decisions and assume active roles locally and globally in facing and resolving global
challenges’.1
While these conceptualizations of SEL are broad in scope, they do not adequately account for
specific developmental needs, priorities and challenges that can affect young people in contexts
emerging from recent experiences of armed conflict and mass violence, and still marked by political,
social and economic fragility.
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Transformative SEL
Context plays a critical role in the elaboration of SEL frameworks and practice. In the USA, CASEL
experts (Jagers, Rivas-Drake, & Borowski, 2018) recently identified a significant gap between
traditional SEL approaches and the particular developmental challenges and needs of young people
in contexts marked by systemic violence and inequity. In response, they have argued for a different
‘transformative SEL’ approach in ‘historically under-served’ (particularly African-American)
communities which renders ‘explicit issues such as power, privilege, prejudice, discrimination, social
justice, empowerment, and self-determination in the field of SEL’ (p.3). Among the distinguishing
features of this approach, transformative SEL connotes a process whereby students and teachers
build strong, respectful relationships founded on an appreciation of similarities and differences,
learn to critically examine root causes of inequity, and develop collaborative solutions to community
and societal problems” (p.3). The authors then use ‘an equity lens’ to elaborate CASEL’s five key SEL
competencies of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and
responsible decision-making. These ‘equity elaborations’ foreground a ‘critical examination of the
root causes of racial and economic inequities’ that is needed in order to foster the desired critical
self-awareness and social awareness in young people (p.13). In addition to these curricular and
pedagogical shifts, they propose that a transformative SEL approach further necessitates critical self-
awareness among teachers and adapted approaches to SEL assessment.
A similar argument will be made in this paper, calling for a transformative, peacebuilding SEL
approach in communities affected by violent conflict, including war-affected contexts such as Syria,
Afghanistan, Iraq, and in countries hosting large populations of refugees such as Lebanon, Jordan
and Turkey, as well as in countries in the global South where social division, poverty, poor
governance and violence intersect. SEL requires special consideration in these contexts where the
social fabric has been damaged by abuses of power, by the politicization of social identities, by
widespread aggression, by violence-induced displacement, deprivation and loss, and by the resulting
intergenerational effects of individual and societal psychosocial ill-health. I will argue that in such
contexts, SEL competences need to be elaborated through a conflict-sensitive lens oriented towards
peacebuilding, justice and reconciliation. These ‘peacebuilding elaborations’ would foreground an
examination of the root causes of intergroup prejudice and discrimination, of the psychological,
social and structural causes and effects of mass violence, and support the development of values
and skills needed for overcoming cultures of denial in order to share responsibility for the
multigenerational work of intra- and inter-community healing, justice and development.
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It may be argued that contexts of war differ from contexts of extreme poverty, and that therefore questions
about the intersection of SEL and sustainable development in these two contexts differ. However, poverty and
violence are closely related in all contexts, differing only the order of appearance and the form(s) that the
violence takes.
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The present paper takes up the challenge of SEL in fragile and conflict-affected contexts by
examining SEL provision in secondary schools in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). For over 20 years,
following its devastating 1992–95 war, BiH has been actively engaged in processes of social
reconstruction, inter=ethnic peacebuilding and reconciliation, in which. SEL has been regarded as an
important component. The BiH context is thus an interesting site for learning about the needs and
challenges of SEL in fragile and conflict-affected environments. In the present research, I was
particularly interested in the following questions:
• What are the social and emotional learning needs of adolescents growing up in (post)conflict
and violence-affected contexts?
• How was the SEL agenda in post-war BiH shaped by local, national and international
stakeholders and interests?
• What effect did these factors have on educational practice and students’ developmental
outcomes?
To answer these questions, I analysed educational laws and the SEL syllabi of six secondary schools
in three ethnically distinct regions of BiH (Sarajevo, Mostar and Banja Luka) and complemented this
analysis with policy interviews, teacher interviews and student focus groups undertaken during the
2012–15 period.
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Combining data sources in this way offered unique insights into the strengths and
limitations of SEL in this country. Before presenting the findings of the study, I will first provide a
brief introduction to the social, emotional and political landscape of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
BiH’s social, emotional and political landscape
Formerly a state within the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH)
was known as a prosperous, educated and tolerant society. However, when the Communist regime
collapsed and territorial conflicts erupted in 1992 between the country’s Serb, Croat and Bosniak
leaders, the country was devastated by 48 months of ethnopolitical warfare. Inflammatory politics,
shifting battle lines, sieges, campaigns of ethnic cleansing and genocide resulted in more than
100,000 people (mostly civilians) being killed, 2 million refugees fleeing the country and another 1
million being internally displaced. Cities and villages were devasted by heavy and indiscriminate
bombing. Schools were converted by militias into detention and torture centres, while children
received improvised instruction in apartment stairwells and basements. All members of society—
young, old, military, civilian, adults, children and youth—were affected by the insecurity, fear,
destruction, death and inhumanity of the conflict. As the war ended, refugees and IDPs began to
return to a country whose infrastructure and economy had been set back decades, and whose
outlook, political-demographic order and collective state of social and psychological health had
radically changed. In 2010, Sarajlic wrote that post-war BiH remains in a state of perpetual conflict
between ‘forces of integration and disintegration’, based on the ‘competing visions’ of
‘fragmentarians’ (principally Serb and Croat political parties) and ‘unitarians’ (principally Bosniak
political parties). Many observers would agree that this is still the case, with important implications
for education generally and for social and emotional learning in particular.
Post-war education stakeholders and objectives
The 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement, which ended BiH’s war, changed the structure of education. A
previously centralized education authority was devolved to ethnically aligned regional authorities
representing the new sub-national political divisions created by wartime campaigns of ethnic
2
This research was supported with funding from the Gates Cambridge Trust.
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cleansing.
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The Peace Agreement also gave an important role to the international community, in
particular the Office of the High Representative (OHR) and the Organisation for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which became extensively involved in education reform processes
aimed at supporting BiH’s transition to peace, democracy and eventual membership of the European
Union.
The 2002 Education Reform Strategy, guided by the OSCE Mission to BiH, set as the country’s
‘overriding objective’ the ‘depoliticization’ of BiH’s post-war education system and its signatories
committed to five ‘pledges’ intended to ensure the delivery of quality, modern, and inclusive
education. First among these, and with implications for SEL, was “the establishment of integrated
multicultural schools free from political, religious, cultural and other bias and discrimination”. But it
was the reform strategy’s definition of ‘quality’ education that set the parameters for SEL within
BiH’s newly democratic society:
Quality education is important for the individual, for the community and for the
country: It brings confidence and personal growth, as well as the skills, knowledge,
values and attitudes that are critical for a young person to become a good and
successful citizen. It produces an aware and engaged citizenry, an enhanced potential
for prosperity, and a society that is fair and just. As BiH strives to become a modern
European state, quality education is essential to prosperity and progress (p.8).
In 2003, the reform strategy was reinforced by the Framework Law on Primary and Secondary
Education in BIH, steered in its development by the OHR. The Framework Law established nine years
of compulsory education and set out the requirements for the Common Core Curriculum (CCC)
which have, in recent years, been elaborated in the form of common learning standards and
outcomes by the Agency for Preschool, Primary and Secondary Education (APOSO). Adoption of the
CCC was intended to promote greater educational harmony between diverse ethnic regions by
ensuring that 70% of the 18 subjects taught across primary and secondary years be common to
schools with student bodies comprised of all ethnicities. However, in practice, the remaining 30% of
‘flexible’ curricular content was applied to the most controversial ‘national’ (i.e. ethnically
significant) subjects of history, geography, language, and religion—topics of instruction that remain
among the key sources of division in the country today.
A social, emotional and political wishlist
SEL was not distinctly referred to or defined in the Framework Law. Rather, it was implied in the
broad EU-aligned objectives assigned to schooling, which included the ‘optimum intellectual,
physical, moral and social development of individuals’, the promotion of healthy lifestyles and the
values of an inclusive and democratic society (Article 2). The Law also specified ‘general goals of
education’ that echo to some degree the SEL competences identified by Cefai et al. (2018). These
included ‘understanding of self, others and the world we live in’, ‘ensuring of optimum development
for each person’, ‘promoting respect for human rights and basic freedoms, democracy and rule of
law’, ‘developing proper cultural identity, language and tradition’, ‘learning about and respecting
diversity and fostering mutual understanding, tolerance and solidarity among all the people, nations
and communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina and worldwide’, ‘ensuring of equal opportunities…
regardless of sex, race, ethnic affiliation, social status, religion, psychophysical and other personal
features’, ‘life-long learning’, ‘economic development’ and ‘inclusion into the European integration
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Post-war BiH has now has 13 regional Ministries of Education and 9 regional Pedagogical Institutes. Ministries
of Education establish education policies. The ‘Pedagogical Institutes’ (PIs) implement these policies, leading
curriculum development, monitoring school performance, and providing continued professional development
training and mentorship to the country’s corps of professional primary and secondary school teachers.
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process.’ In the next section I examine how and to what extent these internationally brokered post-
conflict SEL ideals were translated into educational practice.
Already, however, one can observe that dealing with the past and addressing the social and
emotional impacts of the war on individuals, families and communities, are not explicitly mentioned
or prioritized in these educational objectives. Indeed, no mention of the war or its social and
psychosocial effects on generations of children, young people, their parents, teachers or the school
system (apart from the need to protect the educational rights of returnees) is made in any of the
education reform documents. It is almost as though the war never happened.
Yet twenty years after the war, a school pedagogue in Sarajevo observed:
Unfortunately, post-traumatic stress disorder is still present among people…I am still
working with a large number of people who are suffering from that. They just haven’t
expressed that in a correct way throughout years…and now they have become chronic
problems. People experience pain and a lot of fear. Sometimes when parents come here,
I can recognize these problems as they talk about things that happened to them during
the war…Students of the new generations are more than aware of these things. If they
aren’t being taught about it at school or haven’t been told by their parents, it is reported
in the media, sometimes too much…
While the current students are of the ‘post-war’ generations, the effects of the past continue
to mark their social identities and relations profoundly. The focus group remarks of a Croat
student from Mostar are representative:
When we were in Spain we met some other kids from Banja Luka or from Sarajevo and
when we are in another country we are like brothers. But when we come to Bosnia, then
we start to fight… People, teenagers our age we still have some anger against each other
but we didn’t even fight in war. We weren’t even born… it’s something that we aren’t
born with. It’s just our surroundings who tell us and we try to be like them. It is a shame,
because none of us did really shoot at each other.
Other students talked about persistent challenges with their war-affected parents, social
pressures to carry forward identity struggles resulting from the war, the inability to influence
the direction of their society, and the dismay and frustration created by widespread poverty
and corruption not only in politics and the labor market, but in the education system itself.
Meanwhile, teachers voiced other concerns about BiH youth today, including the prevalence of
‘violent and unacceptable behaviour’, ‘conflicts’, ‘a poorly developed sense of responsibility’,
the tendency only to think about their own rights, not ‘the rights of others’ or their own
‘responsibility’, a lack of ‘inner motivation’ to learn and strive, as well as a lack of critical
thinking, creativity and courage. Where these concerns fit (and do not fit) into SEL curriculum
will now be explored further.
Education, ‘upbringing’ and social and emotional learning in BiH
Amidst a range of post-war reforms, the traditional purpose of schooling in BiH remained intact: BiH
schools are mandated by education law to provide both ‘education’ (obrazovanja) and ‘upbringing’
(odgoj)
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to young people. This ‘upbringing’ aspect of schooling is the domain of social and emotional
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Also translated as ‘character-education’.
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learning in BiH, and all school staff are responsible to this mandate. However, no nationwide
program or strategy for SEL was devised. SEL is not taught as a core content area, nor is it evaluated.
Nonetheless, SEL has a ‘home’ in the fragmented BiH education system, which is the homeroom
class (časovi odjeljenska zajednica): a once-weekly general education period with the students’
registry teacher. Homeroom classes are held for students in all years and in all schools across BiH. In
lower primary, the homeroom teacher is the ‘parent’ for a group of students throughout the first
four years of schooling, teaching all subjects. In middle and high schools, the homeroom teacher is
one of several who provide subject teaching while retaining responsibility for the socialization or
‘upbringing’ of students. The homeroom is a place for discussion and reflection and tends to be the
catch-all for SEL topics including personal development, health, prevention programs and life skills.
As a professor of educational psychology at the University of Banja Luka explained:
The main goal of these classes is to work on socialization, on parts of the child’s life that are
related to health, mental health, moral education and one’s values system.
And as the pedagogue
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at a Sarajevo technical school explained:
We give workshops where students get the chance to learn about themselves, to learn
about their own problems and about the problems of other people, about their needs and
the needs of other people.
The homeroom period is a moment in the week for students to discuss issues related to their
developing identity, social relations, life skills and personal ethics. Typically, schools allocate one
hour per week or 36 hours per year to homeroom classes.
The importance of the homeroom class is especially clear when considering that 75% of in-school
adolescents in BiH attend TVET (technical and vocational) institutions, rather than gymnasia. As
explained by the pedagogue at a technical school in Sarajevo:
We in technical high schools don’t have many social science subjects, so the only time we
can talk about these things is in homeroom class meetings; things that might be missed out
at home because families might be incomplete, poor, or for some other reasons. The school
should be the place where these situations can be fixed.
The homeroom approach reflects traditions that were already in place in the pre-war Yugoslavian
school system and it remains an established feature in post-war schools of all ethnic communities.
However, after the 1990s, the focus of homeroom content shifted in response to social, emotional
and political concerns brought on by the war, as well as the influence of American and European SEL
inputs and the international community’s post-war democratization agenda.
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In BiH, every school has a specially trained Pedagogue who, together with the school director (headteacher)
and school secretary, forms the core managerial team which takes overall responsibility for developing the
quality of communication, coordination and provision within the institution and community of the school. The
Pedagogue (usually female) performs multiple roles: she operates as a curriculum and teaching advisor to the
teacher corps, an in-house trainer, and counsellor or mediator for the teacher and student body in times of
difficulty or conflict. In many parts of BiH, the school Pedagogue establishes the syllabus for the homeroom class.
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Organization of SEL content
SEL instruction in BiH homeroom classes is organized on the basis of poorly defined lists of topics
chosen by the regional education authority or by the school pedagogue.
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Whereas core curriculum
subjects have received considerable reform attention, with international actors pushing for EU-
aligned learning outcomes, harmonized standards, improved textbooks and teacher training, SEL has
been marginal to the reform and harmonization agenda. Teachers are provided with few
standardized SEL materials or resources providing guidance on how topics should be framed, what
content covered, what messages communicated, what learning attained, or what pedagogical
approaches and activities to employ. NGOs and international organizations have sometimes supplied
support materials on particular themes,
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but these have not been obligatory and have never been
integrated into all schools across the country.
Pedagogical Institutes occasionally develop and share guidelines, but more often it is the individual
school pedagogues, trained in pastoral psychology and learning theories, who are designated to
advise teachers on how to approach a given SEL topic. In many cases, teachers assemble SEL
materials themselves. Ultimately, as homeroom instruction is not examined, teachers have wide
latitude in this respect and even within the same school may approach the suggested topics in
widely different ways. To a great extent, teachers use their own judgement to draw from available
and online sources, teaching the topic as they feel appropriate.
In terms of teacher preparation and professional development on SEL topics, interviews with
teachers and school pedagogues revealed that most of this was outsourced to international agencies
and non-governmental organizations in the early post-war period. Even today, very little training is
provided by ministries of education and pedagogical faculties on SEL topics. As such, SEL training
remains rather ad hoc, influenced from time to time by international inputs that may or may not
correspond to locally identified SEL needs.
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While the schools in this study demonstrated a common understanding of the broad purposes of
homeroom SEL, it was found that their use of the homeroom differed in function with local
experiences of the war experience and local ethnopolitical agendas. As will be demonstrated in the
next section, significant variations were identified not only between ethnic communities but within
them as well, based on the unique historical-geopolitical position of the school. On the one hand,
the flexibility in this approach to SEL provision is in certain respects ideal as it enables local actors to
determine contextually relevant SEL content. On the other hand, this local selection of content is
invariably mediated by political agendas that, if unchecked, can feed ongoing conflict dynamics in
the country. In the case of BiH, it would appear that the decentralized SEL strategy represents a
missed opportunity to provide young first- and second-generation survivors of war with the
knowledge, values, attitudes, and skills that they need to navigate choices and challenges invariably
affected by the legacies of mass violence, as well as ongoing social and political conflict.
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The Republika Srpska Ministry of Education defines the homeroom syllabi centrally. The cantonal Ministries of
Education throughout Federation BiH make some recommendations, but leave this task to the Pedagogues of
each individual school.
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It was reported, for example, that during and immediately following the war, some schools received training
and resources on psychosocial wellbeing and trauma psychology from the World Health Organisation and
Medecins Sans Frontieres, and that the organization Civitas provided lesson materials on democracy education
and human rights.
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Such as a campaign by UNICEF focussed on reducing violence in schools that engaged teachers in professional
development seminars, but which some local educators felt was irrelevant to the BiH school context.
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Content analysis of SEL in three regions
For this case study, homeroom syllabi were gathered in 2014 from gymnasia and technical-
vocational secondary schools in three ethnically distinct regions (Bosniak-majority Sarajevo, Bosniak-
Croat Mostar, and Serb-majority Republika Srpska) for analysis.
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Each syllabus proposed 25–30
discussion topics per year group.
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Some schools used a thematic framework; others assembled a list
of random topics from which teachers ‘pick and mix’ as they wish. An examination of the prescribed
topics offers insight into what the education authorities of different ethnic regions regarded as post-
war socialization priorities.
Content analysis of the 500 topics included in these syllabi, together with teacher interviews and
student focus groups, revealed that while each of the syllabi addressed a selection of traditional SEL
themes related to emotional awareness and regulation, health and risk prevention, self-
development and relationships, social norms and manners, study skills and career preparation,
decision-making, collaboration and problem-solving, there was wide variation across ethnic regions
in BiH, and no common framework for progression through the learning themes. Internationally
furnished content on societal and global themes such as democracy, human rights, environmental
responsibility, and gender equity were also unevenly represented.
Most importantly, topics dealing with the legacies of the war including the causes of violence and its
prevention, trauma recovery, local war histories and heroes, cultural, religious and political
traditions and social identities, the challenge of pluralism and intergroup relations, current societal
challenges, and skills for intercommunity problem-solving, peacebuilding and reconciliation varied
greatly from one locality and ethnic community to another, for example:
• Both Serb and Bosniak schools addressed war-related topics, but from different
perspectives. The Serb homeroom curriculum emphasized war preparedness (‘limiting
devastation’) and introduced students to ‘the perspective of fighters’, while the Bosniak
schools emphasized survival under siege (‘first aid for blast injuries’, ‘how to stop bleeding’),
trauma recovery (‘trauma and how to heal it’), and war memory (‘forgetting and
remembering’ and ‘the people who defended this city’). Meanwhile, Croat homeroom
classes omitted issues related to war but included a topic on ‘how to treat people who are
mourning’.
• Conflicting social-political identity commemorations were also included in homeroom
syllabi. The BiH State Independence Day (March 1) was celebrated in the Bosniak schools,
while the Serb schools officially boycott this day, celebrating instead the Republika Srpska’s
self-declared Independence Day on 9 January.
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Meanwhile, Croat schools avoided state
celebrations, focusing rather on ‘cultural and historical monuments in our town’.
• Most of the schools addressed issues of conflict and violence, introducing some form of non-
violent conflict resolution, while only half of the syllabi included topics on peace, diversity,
tolerance and human rights. Noticeably, none of these topics was covered in Serb schools
and very few in the Croat technical school. Overall, the Bosniak schools covered the widest
range of peacebuilding topics, following by the elite Croat gymnasium. However, while
9
The syllabi for Republika Srpska (RS) schools was at that time ‘under review’. The current revised edition was
significantly reorganized but beyond the scope of the present study.
10
This would mean that each topic is allocated one hour of classroom coverage. Where schools propose more
topics, teachers would have the option to omit those that they deem are less important or too complicated to
cover in the available time.
11
While the BiH state public holiday is official in Croat communities as well, it is generally not celebrated. See
Dzidic (2013).
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positive communication skills were included in the Serb and Bosniak schools, they were not
included in the Croat schools.
• Democracy and critical thinking were emphasized in the three Bosniak schools. Democracy
was also covered in the Serb curriculum, but as a procedural topic without emphasis on
critical thinking. Indeed, interviews with contacts at the Ministry of Education in Banja Luka
specifically mentioned that critical thinking among teachers and students was ‘not welcome’
in the RS school system.
• Bosniak schools confronted topics on ‘How do events in the world affect our community?’,
‘Current issues’ and ‘Politics in our country’ (which would have necessitated a discussion of
interethnic relations), while nothing comparable was included in Serb or Croat syllabi.
• Bosniak schools promoted multiculturalism (‘BiH: a multicultural and multiethnic society’,
‘overcoming differences in cultures’, ‘love towards all people’), while Croat and Serb schools
avoided normative pluralism, including rather one topic on ‘similarities and differences
between people’.
• Bosniak schools, and to a lesser extent the Croat gymnasium, addressed various topics on
moral development, values and spirituality, psychological and social maturity, self-education
and helping others, all of particular importance in conditions of adversity, while these topics
were virtually absent from the syllabi of Serb schools and the Croat technical school.
None of the homeroom class syllabi distinguished between the topics to be addressed and the
competences, values or behaviours to be acquired. No overarching framework such as that proposed
by CASEL, whether borrowed or domestically created, was referred to in the education policies or
homeroom documentation. As an expert in Banja Luka remarked:
If you ask someone from the Ministry or Pedagogical Institute: ‘How do you imagine a
child who has finished primary school or how do you imagine a youth who has finished
secondary school?’ I do not think that they will have any image, any picture of that
person and what knowledge, what skills, what values that person should have.
That such a systematic approach had not been adopted is a clear limitation of SEL provision in BiH.
Not only are the learning outcomes of SEL not clear, but there is consequently a lack of progression
over the years of schooling as well. This may be beginning to shift now as the country has begun to
adopt a competency-based approach to curriculum planning. However, interviews with teachers and
focus groups with students indicated that in lieu of a clear framework, it was often the personal and
political values of the teacher that significantly shaped which value-orientations are privileged in
class. Students did not necessarily agree with the teacher’s value stance (whether chauvinistic or
peace-oriented) and in some cases actively resisted them. Particularly on sensitive topics, like the
society’s past and present social divisions, students in several focus groups contrasted what is
‘taught’ with what is ‘truth.’ It was also found that the values promoted through SEL lessons could
be influenced by the religious worldview of the school community. For example, the religious
worldview of a Bosniak Muslim school that survived the Sarajevo siege gave a particular shape to the
kinds of emotions, values and coping skills that the school included in its SEL approach. The school’s
prayer valued resignation, detachment, courage, stoicism and forgiveness, which are not reflected in
CASEL’s or the OECD’s SEL competence frameworks.
Tensions between the universal and the specific
Cefai et al (2018) recognize that
…the diversity challenge in [SEL] is complex because socio-emotional issues are linked to
beliefs, attitudes, values and behaviours that are very closely related to cultural systems. It
has been pointed out, for instance, that many current [SEL] programmes are based on the
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dominant Western individualistic culture that may not be shared by other, more collectivist
cultures…The challenge is to find a balance between, on the one hand, curriculum integrity
to ensure effectiveness, while, on the other hand, adapting it to the local social, cultural and
linguistic context to ensure it is developmentally and culturally sensitive. For instance, over-
adaptation to local needs and circumstances may lead to programme dilution and confusion
(pp.64–65).
But in conflict-affected contexts, the challenge can take on a distinctly political character. Indeed, an
EU technical assistance report on BiH Education Reform (2008–15), highlighted particular
… challenges concerning the promotion of internationalization and globalization in [BiH]
education, whilst preserving the traditional and cultural values of peoples and citizens,…
[including] values that are favourable for the development of a feeling of togetherness;
acceptance of and respect for differences; solidarity and responsibility for sustainable
development; encouraging a work-ethic amongst the citizenry and developing democratic
society as a whole (p.16).
In the context of post-war realpolitik, education authorities and local school communities have
tended to privilege particular ethnic traditions and nation-building discourses over others. Students
in all communities reported on the prevalence of ethnically biased discourses at school.
The foregoing analysis reveals that SEL content in the BiH post-conflict setting became very much
place-based. Even when drawing on international resources, SEL provision was shaped in significant
ways by the given school authority’s ethnic (and sometimes religious) orientation and the
community’s local, violence-affected and politically inflected SEL needs. In some important ways,
these different approaches to SEL have reinforced contradictory messages about self and others,
identity and community, relationships, responsibility and peacebuilding among BiH young people.
Correlating these findings with youth focus groups, it became evident that this approach to SEL was
not responding adequately to the needs of adolescents to deal with the (often politicized) social and
emotional challenges of their society.
Discussion and implications
A number of policy- and practice-relevant reflections emerge from the BiH experience of SEL
provision that merit attention when planning SEL provision in other conflict-affected contexts.
Briefly:
• Social and emotional learning needs can vary considerably from one community to
another within a single country, based on local experiences of social conflict, violence and
trauma.
• SEL tends thus to be place-based, either by design or by interpretation, particularly in
fragile and conflict-affected regions where issues of identity, territory, history, culture and
politics are deeply intertwined. If locally designed, as in the case of BiH, SEL content is likely
to reflect local political worldviews as well as local cultural and social-emotional needs.
Arguments in favor of this approach note that in this way, SEL can be adapted to local needs
for violence recovery, identity development, community problem solving. However, there is
a risk that SEL will also be instrumentalized as a means to reinforce the socialization of
particular values and social identities. As such, localized forms of SEL may feed conflict
dynamics.
• SEL in conflict-affected contexts, as in all education, is not neutral. It is subject to social and
political agendas in the same way that other human science subjects like history, religion
and culture are. A conflict-sensitive approach to SEL is thus needed, as are ‘peacebuilding
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elaborations’ on core SEL values and skills. A ‘conflict-sensitive’ approach recognizes the
importance of asking, Who is excluded? and What is excluded? from SEL provision, and How
might this reinforce conflict dynamics? Asking these questions in the BiH context suggested
that students in certain types of schools, content on ‘other’ ethnicities, and specific
peacebuilding skills necessary to address historical wounds and contemporary social
challenges, were poorly addressed in SEL syllabi.
• Indeed, SEL provision can be affected by social class dynamics. In BiH, SEL received greater
attention and resources at gymnasia (university-track secondary schools that offer science
and social science curricula) than in TVET (technical and vocational) schools, which tend to
serve students with lower socioeconomic status. Attention should be given to the quality of
SEL provision across populations and institutional types.
• Unfortunately, in the BiH case, SEL education was not accorded strategic reform attention
by either national or international actors in the post-war period. Ad hoc approaches were
taken, missing opportunities for country-wide coherence and more strategic support to
young people’s violence recovery and peacebuilding competence needs, including a clear
progression through key topics and skills over the years of schooling.
• Finally, strategic thought also needs to be given to the lens through which SEL is
interpreted in context. What is most appropriate in a conflict-affected setting? An
individualistic lens (focussed on ‘me’ and ‘my experience’), a collectivistic lens (focussed on
‘my community’ possibly to the exclusion of other communities), or a peacebuilding lens
(focussed on ‘all of us’ in our diversity and ‘our shared roles’ in resolving individual and
societal challenges)?
Based on the findings of this research, I would agree with Cefai et al (2018) who propose that
… while other related areas—such as citizenship, health education, and prevention of
violence and bullying—overlap with some of the goals of SEL,… [it] should have its own
distinct place within curricula (p.11).
They recommend that social and emotional learning be adopted as a mandatory core curriculum
area, to be taught as both key content and embedded transversal themes. Even ‘the mission
statements and objectives of schools should include a whole-school approach to social and
emotional education.’ Furthermore, ‘school policies should be clear on how they intend to promote
and implement SEE policy at instructional, contextual and organisational levels’ (p.13). To ensure
successful curricular integration, they argue for adequate ‘teacher education programmes to ensure
the development of teachers’ own social and emotional competences’ (p.12). However, it is
recognized that
…these recommendations are more likely to work if they are accompanied by parallel
interventions to break down barriers and create structures and systems which promote
mental health and wellbeing, equal opportunities, and social justice (p.13).
It is also advisable that, particularly in fragile and conflict-affected contexts, special efforts should be
made to ensure that
… different cultural perspectives, experiences and behaviours are incorporated into
universal SEE programmes at the design stage… Curriculum developers can also intentionally
consider the needs of diverse groups… (such as) by ensuring that at least one of the stories
and activities in each of the resilience skills topics specifically addresses adversities more
common among diverse groups, particularly issues related to bullying, prejudice,
discrimination, isolation, lack of friends, language barriers, difficulties in accessing learning,
exclusion, or culture mismatch. …[Indeed,] quality adaptation entails a rigorous evaluation of
a context’s particular needs, while preserving the curriculum’s integrity. Some countries,
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regions, communities and schools, may need to focus more attention on particular
competences, behaviours, and issues than others (Cefai et al, 2018: pp.64-65, p.66).
In fragile and conflict-affected contexts, a particular emphasis is needed on violence recovery and
prevention, critical perspectives on identity formation and on identity mobilization in political,
ideological and economic conflicts. For SEL to contribute to peacebuilding, it must be framed by the
recognition of shared humanity with historical enemies, and emphasis must be placed on the
importance of truth, justice and reconciliation, based on accountability and responsibility for past
harms (sometimes on all sides). This depends on acquiring openness to and skills of multi-
perspectivity and empathy, as well as inclusive, non-violent modes of problem-solving. Values and
skills that enable intercommunity reconciliation, such as recognition of shared humanity, deep
listening, moral courage, accountability and responsibility, solidarity and common cause, inclusion
and justice, are arguably the most difficult to learn and the most needed in the wake of mass
intercommunity violence. Such an approach would necessitate shifts in the intended SEL learning
outcomes, curricular content and pedagogical approach. Teacher preparation and assessment would
likewise need to be adapted accordingly.
Conclusion
Social and emotional learning frameworks should be adapted to meet the particular needs of
communities emerging from a recent history of violent intergroup conflict. In the context of Bosnia
and Herzegovina, this was made possible by providing locally defined SEL content through
‘homeroom classes’. However, the case also highlights the limitations of a homeroom approach to
SEL within an ethno-politically fragmented country. Without a common framework or resources,
there is a lack of intercommunity coherence to SEL provision that does not serve the country’s
peacebuilding and reconciliation needs. The case thus demonstrates how SEL is mediated and
changed by the social-political contexts in which it is delivered and draws our attention to risks that
can arise from localized approaches in conflict-affected contexts. For SEL to contribute not only to
individual wellbeing but also collective wellbeing, a coherent, contextually appropriate and conflict-
sensitive nationwide strategy must be adopted.
References
Cefai, C., Bartolo, P., Cavioni, V., & Downes, P. (2018). Strengthening social and emotional education
as a core curricular area across the EU. A review of the international evidence, NESET II report.
Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2018. https://doi.org/10.2766/664439
Dzidic, D. (2013, February 28). Bosnian Independence Day divides ethnic communities.
BalkanInsight. Retrieved from http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/bosnian-
independence-day-still-divides-ethnic-groups
Government of Bosnia and Herzegovina. (2002). Education reform strategy: A message to the people
of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Brussels: Ministry of Civil Affairs of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Jagers, R. J., Rivas-Drake, D., & Borowski, T. (2018). Equity and social emotional learning: A cultural
analysis. Chicago, IL: CASEL. Retrieved from http://nationalequityproject.org/
Sarajlic, E. (2010). Bosnian elections and recurring ethnonationalisms: The ghost of the nation state.
Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe, 2(2), pp.66–88.
