Social and emotional learning (SEL) is an integral part of education and human development. SEL is the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitude, 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.
In general, humans pay a lot of attention to hard skills, such as reading, writing, and computing. These skills require both knowledge and proficiency to complete specific tasks. Educators could easily measure these abilities through standardized tests and assessments.
In contrast, social-emotional learning (SEL) is a soft skill, which makes it difficult to measure. SEL is an intangible ability that we can perceive but only evaluate subjectively.
SEL Across Age Levels
The assessments help us track and measure a student's educational experience. They let us see what students are doing well and what areas they should improve. Students with strong SEL skills have more positive attitudes, participate more in the classroom, and are more accepted by teachers. Without SEL skills, they are likely to dislike school and perform poorly on academic tasks. As children mature, the role of SEL changes in their daily lives. During early childhood, SEL skills are organized around positive engagement with people and environment. Young children are often required to sit still or follow directions, and get along with others both at school and outside of school.
When children are entering a middle childhood, SEL tasks then change radically. During this period of time, children become more aware of a wider social network and learn to form positive relationships with peers and adults. These tasks emphasize self-control, which can be challenging at a young age.
Adolescents are expected to form closer relationships with peers and interact with a large group of people. Adolescence also comes with empathy development, giving students the ability to see the world from other people’s perspectives.
Setting SEL Goals and Benchmarks Through Standards
Because SEL plays an important role of children’s development, the standards in this area are as
crucial as those in any other area. The interpersonal domain includes teamwork, collaboration, and leadership. The interpersonal domain includes intellectual openness, work ethic, and positive self-evaluation. However, the NRC (2012) acknowledges that cognitive skills have been addressed more extensively than have interpersonal and interpersonal skills, which have no assessment tools to benchmark students.
Since Common Core State Standards do not sufficiently address SEL needs, in terms of standards or assessment, it’s useful to look at Dusenbury el al, which examines states’ SEL standards. Several states have adopted excellent SEL standards and the Illinois State Board of Education is one of the best examples. Each SEL standard for elementary, middle, and high school is organized around three main goals that take in all the aspects of SEL:
Goal 1 is to develop self-awareness and self-management skills to achieve school and life success.
Goal 2 is to use social awareness and interpersonal skills to establish and maintain positive relationships.
Goal 3 is to demonstrate decision-making skills and responsible behaviors in personal school, and community contexts.
Tools for Assessing SEL in Educational Setting
Devereux Early Childhood Assessment, Second Edition
Devereux Early Childhood Assessment, Second Edition is nationally-normed assessment that evaluates within-child protective factors associated with resilience in preschool children. Both parents and teachers can do the assessment checklist, in either English or Spanish, and evaluates the presence of 27 positive behaviors common in preschool children.
Devereux Student Strengths Assessment
Devereux Student Strengths Assessment are behavior rating scales for elementary school-age children (K-8), completed by parents or teachers. The DESSA measures child strengths that map very directly onto the SEL skills described here. Specifically, it provides ratings on 72 items across eight scales, including:
Optimistic thinking
Self-management
Goal-directed behavior
Self-awareness
Social awareness
Personal responsibility
Decision making
Relationship skills
A social-emotional composite score is also included, which is based on a combination of the eight scales. Web-based administration, scoring, and interpretation are available.
Social-Emotional Assets and Resilience Scale
The Social-Emotional Assets and Resilience Scale (SEARS) for K-12 includes a screener, as well as 52- to 54-item Teacher (SEARS-T), Parent (SEARS-P), Child (SEARS-C), and Adolescent (SEARS-A) versions, and examines SEL from a conceptual framework that is close, but not identical, to that sketched here: responsibility, social competence, empathy, and self-regulation.
The SEARS measures child strengths and provides useful information for intervention planning. They can also be applied to create student profiles for ongoing progress monitoring and subsequent prevention strategies.
Social Skills Improvement System Rating Scales
The Social Skills Improvement System Rating Scales is a set of rating scales, which are designed to assess children's social behavior and assist in the implementation of interventions. This measure updates the widely used and positively evaluated Social Skills Rating Scales. Improvements include:
Updated norms
Four additional subscales for a broader conceptualization of social-emotional development
Greater overlap across forms
Validity scales
Improved psychometric properties
Spanish versions of forms
Direct links to intervention
The system includes rating scales for teachers and parents covering the PreK-to-18-years age range, and self-report versions for students at the grade-school level and beyond.
Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale
The Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale (BERS) and the Preschool BERS (PreBERS) are strength-based SEL instruments. Both show robust, replicable factor structures, as well as reliability and validity.
Meta Description: Social and emotional learning (SEL) is an integral part of education and human development. It is the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitude, 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.
References: https://www.edutopia.org/blog/tools-assess-sel-in-schools-susanne-a-denham
