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What School Leaders Need to Advance SEL

November 8, 2017 Inform

What School Leaders Need to Advance SEL By Jennifer DePaoli, Civic Enterprises In a prior blog post, a call was made to elevate practitioner voice in the conversation about SEL assessment, and in our recently released report, Ready to Lead: A National Principal Survey on How Social and Emotional Learning Can Prepare Children and Transform Schools, we aimed to do just that. The report, a follow up to the 2013 teacher survey, The Missing Piece, examines the beliefs of principals, superintendents, and district research and evaluation specialists on social and emotional learning to better understand their views on SEL, the extent to which it is being implemented in schools, what school and district leaders need to advance social and […]

Design Challenge Winner: Measuring students’ executive functions in a classroom context with an innovative, tablet-based assessment

November 6, 2017 Inspire

By Jelena Obradović Imagine entering a quiet room where you are greeted by a friendly research assistant. She smiles at you, asks you about your day, maybe makes a funny joke. Next, you are seated together as she explains a game you will be playing. As you practice the rules, she offers enthusiastic praise and encouragement. During the game, she monitors your progress, and when it’s over, she gives you a small toy as an appreciation of your effort. This highly controlled setting is typical in studies of child development, particularly in assessments of children’s executive functions (EF) — the skills that enable children to control their attention, behaviors, and emotions. Through studies like these, EFs have been linked to […]

Social-emotional learning and competency assessment in East Asia, Part 1

October 25, 2017 Inform

Patrick Kyllonen, Educational Testing Service A series of blogs about international efforts to measure SEL The so-called Confucian Asian countries, including Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, and Japan[1] produce the highest achieving students in the world based on their scores on international mathematics, reading, science, and problem solving tests (e.g., TIMSS; PISA 2015; PISA 2012). According to Magdalena Mok and Gerald Wu from the Education University of Hong Kong, this at least partly reflects the “examination-driven and achievement-oriented” learning environments stemming from traditional Confucian philosophy. Economic growth over the past 35 years suggests that Asia’s success is not confined to test scores. What may be surprising to Westerners is the degree to which these examination-driven countries have embraced social-emotional learning (SEL) […]

Design Challenge Winner Zoo U: A Game Platform for Performance-based Assessment of Children’s Social and Emotional Skills

October 23, 2017 Inspire

By Millicent Mooring, 3C Institute It’s well established that strong social and emotional (SE) skills are key to doing well in school—not only socially but also academically—and the earlier they’re learned, the better. To effectively intervene with students who are struggling, schools must first assess which students need help in which areas. Unfortunately, traditional survey methods for SE skills assessment require considerable staff time, making them costly and time-consuming to implement. Furthermore, the results aren’t always reliable due to inconsistent administration and students’ altering their behavior because they know they’re being tested. Designed and developed with funding from the U.S. Department of Education, Zoo U delivers a research-proven, game-based performance assessment of upper elementary aged children’s SE skills (grades 2-5); providing schools with […]

The Appropriate Roles of Assessment in Social and Emotional Learning

October 18, 2017 Inform

By Paul LeBuffe Research has clearly demonstrated that social and emotional competence is critical to students’ success in school. In the most widely cited study, Durlak and colleagues reviewed 213 studies and reported that school-based programs that promote students’ social and emotional competence result in an average 11 percentile point gain on academic achievement tests. This and similar research findings have led several states and local school districts to adopt social and emotional learning standards. These standards, in turn, have created interest in assessing social and emotional skills in students, which is reflected in the most recent federal education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA. The new law requires that states develop an accountability system that encompasses both […]

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Blog

What School Leaders Need to Advance SEL

Design Challenge Winner: Measuring students’ executive functions in a classroom context with an innovative, tablet-based assessment

Social-emotional learning and competency assessment in East Asia, Part 1

Design Challenge Winner Zoo U: A Game Platform for Performance-based Assessment of Children’s Social and Emotional Skills

The Appropriate Roles of Assessment in Social and Emotional Learning

INFORM

INSPIRE

ENGAGE

CONNECT

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