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Design Challenge Winner PERC: Assessing Growth Mindset

October 16, 2017 Inspire

By Tenelle Porter, University of California, Davis Visualize something you’ve always been pretty good at–maybe it’s a skill or subject in school that came easily to you, something that made you think “I’m a natural!” Now, think about something you really struggled with but eventually learned. Maybe it’s playing an instrument, or solving quadratic equations — something that took effort, practice, and lots of failure, but that eventually you got. Research tells us that both of these experiences probably informed your “theories” about how abilities work. One belief you may have developed is that abilities are fixed; this view says that we come into the world good at some things and bad at others and we stay that […]

Social Detective: Design Challenge Winner, 2nd place

October 9, 2017 Inspire

By Samuel Moulton, Panorama Education At Panorama Education we help educators collect, understand, and act on measures of social-emotional learning, school climate, and family engagement. Our survey-based measures are reliable, valid, and also useful: Students, teachers, and leaders from over 350 districts rely on them to receive feedback on their teaching and learning efforts. We’ve seen firsthand how districts like Fresno Unified and Washoe County have used SEL measurement to drive positive, system-wide changes for their students. At the same time, we’ve been inspired to explore new ways to advance SEL measurement, including performance tasks. CASEL’s inaugural competition offered us a unique opportunity to design and prototype an innovative SEL assessment, Social Detective, that measures and develops […]

The Voice of Practitioners Matters Most – Help Us Listen

October 4, 2017 Engage

By: Dale A. Blyth, Consultant and Deborah Moroney, American Institutes for Research Practitioner voice has not been elevated adequately in the conversation about SEL assessment. Why is this so? The world of assessment, SEL and otherwise, comes mostly from academics, measure developers, and users in research, (or recovering applied academics like ourselves) but assessments are used (and rightly challenged) by practitioners. Who are we talking about here? The people working daily with children and youth: Educators, out-of-school time professionals, student support specialists, and educational leaders in schools, districts and programs. As the Assessment Work Group (AWG) seeks to move forward on our three goals of 1) understanding the value of different frameworks, 2) developing a practical guide to assessment, and 3) […]

Design Challenge Winner: Student Assessment Engagement

October 2, 2017 Inspire

By James Soland, NWEA Any educator who’s administered a test will likely relate to this anecdote: while most students in class appear absorbed in the assessment, there’s one student who stares off into space. Or who doodles on his scratch paper. Or who simply puts her head down on the desk. And, it’s usually unsurprising when scores for that student come back low. What we’ve learned at NWEA through our research partnership with Santa Ana Unified School District is that these small signs of disengagement from a test can be subtle manifestations of deep-rooted issues related to self-belief, motivation, and engagement. They can be clues to how students perceive themselves, and to where they see themselves going. […]

Designing Direct Assessments – Lessons Learned and Award Winners

September 27, 2017 Connect

By Clark McKown and Noah Bookman Earlier this year, the Assessment Work Group created an assessment design challenge to identify direct assessment tools to supplement districts’ current emphasis on teacher and student surveys that measure SEL competencies. Direct assessments include all forms of assessment in which social and emotional learning is measured from a child’s performance on a challenging task. This includes but is not limited to naturalistic technology-enhanced simulations, performance tasks, game-based data, and live structured social simulations. Direct assessment is distinct from other forms of assessment, such as observations, student self-report, or teacher or parent ratings of students’ skills. To stimulate work to design direct assessments that complement, build upon, and extend the existing measurement […]

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Blog

Design Challenge Winner PERC: Assessing Growth Mindset

Social Detective: Design Challenge Winner, 2nd place

The Voice of Practitioners Matters Most – Help Us Listen

Design Challenge Winner: Student Assessment Engagement

Designing Direct Assessments – Lessons Learned and Award Winners

INFORM

INSPIRE

ENGAGE

CONNECT

Blog

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