Forgiveness Curricula for Children: A Narrative Synthesis for Development of Indigenous Forgiveness Curriculum for Grade one Learners in Pakistan

Abstract

More than 20 years of forgiveness education research adopted from Robert Enright's developmental model has been translated into child developmental contexts and cultures around the world. The aim of this narrative synthesis was to take a brief review of peer-reviewed, scholarly literature published from 2015 to 2024 on forgiveness curricula for primary school students Grade 1-4 learners. Secondly to address two questions notable in the landscape of previous syntheses on primary school forgiveness curricula: (a) What is the evidence base that suggests about forgiveness curricula for primary school students Grade 1-4 learners? (b) How much has there been in the literature published from 2015 to 2024 that is directly indigenous-focused and culturally rich, or that are taught without being imported largely unchanged from another national context?. A recent meta-analysis was used for citation chaining to determine additional records, yielding a total of 34 records within the 2015 to 2024 period and two additional studies that were published before 2015 that were retained for the purpose of citation chaining because they were the only analyses published of a forgiveness curriculum with Grade 1 children. Two studies related to the broader international forgiveness-curriculum literature (one a meta-analysis and the other a new forgiveness-curriculum-evaluation study), and five studies related specifically to the Pakistani culture were included within the 2015–2024 range: two of these studies, and two further background studies from before 2015, met the inclusion criteria. Based on a recent meta-analysis of 20 forgiveness-education studies (Rapp et al., 2022), the main result is that forgiveness curricula have robust (Medium to Large effects) for older children (Grade 4 – 12); and non-significant pooled effects for the youngest primary learners (Grade 1 – 3) and deserves to be considered as a preliminary result at best and a trend of no point if truly hypothetical (Rapp et al., 2022). Concurrently, there was no study conducted in the last decade (from 2015–2024) that assessed a program that used an indigenously developed and forgiveness-focused curricula in any nation with Grade 1 learners. These results collectively indicate that a forgiveness  curriculum for children in Grade 1 in particular, in Pakistan is still a sub researched and sub practiced area of Indigenous forgiveness studies. The review examines developmental, methodological and cultural explanations for this gap, and outlines specific areas for priorities in the design and assessment of new curriculum.