9: A complex global governance of education: multiscalar social and emotional learning policy making in Lebanon

Authors:
Jisun Jeong
and
Laura Engel
Publication Date:
30 Jul 2024
Pages:
209–231
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51952/9781447368045.ch009
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This chapter focuses on the complex processes and underlying mechanisms in the formation of Lebanon’s national social and emotional learning (SEL) policies since the Syrian refugee influx in 2011. Drawing conceptually on education policy mobilities and the cultural political economy of education, the primary focus is on following SEL as an example of globally mobile education policy ideas and policy frameworks. Empirically, we draw on two primary data sources generated in a larger comparative case study: policy document analysis and 26 semi-structured interviews with transnational–national actors and four national policy makers, conducted virtually from September 2020 to June 2021. The findings illustrate how the US-originated SEL discourses and approaches have become deterritorialized and globally mobile as a global policy solution by interactions across the transnational policy actors, networks, events, and the shifting technological and topological apparatus arising across multiple scales. Identifying policy actors across multiple scales and studying the key drivers of their engagement illuminate the topologies of the global aid architecture. Although the national SEL policy-making processes in Lebanon were perceived to epitomize collaboration among actors on multiple levels, the roles undertaken by transnational–national actors and national policy makers in those processes are reflective of highly unequal power dynamics.

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