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Social-Emotional Learning in Action October 4, 2018 | Volume 14 | Issue 4 Table of Contents
6 Steps to Effective SEL Assessment
Clark McKown
A national survey suggests that most educators believe that children's social and emotional development is critical to a child's success in school and life, and that it is an educator's job to nurture these skills.
If you count yourself among that majority of educators who not only care about children's social and emotional learning SEL), but who are also actively supporting SEL as part of their effort to educate the whole child, I urge you to assess it regularly. To teach reading skills effectively, you must understand the strengths and needs of your students. Similarly, it's important to understand children's social-emotional skill level, so that you can build on strengths and address needs through curriculum, instruction, and your relationship with your students.
Okay, you say, that sounds like a good idea, but how do I do that? There are lots of good reading tests, but there aren't any SEL assessments. That's not true, actually (as you'll see in item #3). To implement effective SEL assessment, consider the following questions:
Note that in these six steps, selecting the right assessment tool is only one part. That is because, assessment developer though I am, it is increasingly clear to me that the most important part is not the assessment itself (although I advise picking a good one!). The more important consideration is to use your assessment wisely, which means being clear about what you want to measure, why you want to measure it, selecting the right tool for the job, and having a plan for discussing and taking action based on what you learn.
Clark McKown is author of the forthcoming Assessing Students' Social and Emotional Learning: From Planning Through Action (Norton) and an associate professor of Behavioral Sciences at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Ill. He is founder and president of xSEL Labs and a member of the steering committee of The Practical Social-Emotional Competence Assessment Work Group. He is a nationally recognized leader in the field of SEL assessment, and findings from his research have been published in scientific journals including Psychological Assessment, Journal of School Psychology, and Child Development.
ASCD Express, Vol. 14, No. 4. Copyright 2018 by ASCD. All rights reserved. Visit www.ascd.org/ascdexpress.
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