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1. This resource has different techniques and modes of assessments to receive feedback on your teaching and course material.

2. I plan to frequently incorporate student feedback for myself. It's nice to have different models to do so.

3. This will impact my practice by giving me different opportunities to have my students evaluate me.

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Classroom Assessment Techniques – Class Feedback

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1. This is an infographic of the ways to differentiate for students.

2. This is more informational for myself because I struggled remembering what each differentiation type was called.

3. This will benefit me when writing lesson plans so I can write how I am differentiating properly.

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Personal, Cultural, and Community Assets

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Personal, Cultural, and Community Assets

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1. I copied this from the Module and it explains how to give and get respect and rapport. It also has some really great resources on student assets.

2. I think all of these things are important to know and remind myself of. I want to have respect from my students and I want them to know I respect them.

3. I hope I know all of these things now, but if I like to have it on hand in case I feel like I need to change something about my teaching because I am not getting or giving the respect or rapport I need.

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Personal, Cultural, and Community Assets

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Moving from Safe Classrooms to Brave Classrooms

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Moving from Safe Classrooms to Brave Classrooms

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1. This article talks about how to have a "safe environment" but also how to move past that and getting students to be brave.

2. As a dance teacher, I always say I need/want/have to create a safe environment so my students feel comfortable trying new and weird things, but this article really challenged my thinking.

3. This article will encourage me to let my students do things that may challenge others.

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Moving from Safe Classrooms to Brave Classrooms

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1. This article is about the power of getting your students to try.

2. This goes along with the growth-mindset article, but it has some great ideas for incorporating it.

3. These practices are reminders on how to have a growth mindset in my teaching. I plan to incorporate these ideas, but I like to have it on hand in case I need a reminder.

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ONE DAY LAST NOVEMBER, psychology professor Carol Dweck welcomed a pair of visitors from the Blackburn Rovers, a soccer team in the United Kingdom's Premier League. The Rovers' training academy is ranked in England's top three, yet performance director Tony Faulkner had long suspected that many promising players weren't reaching their potential. Ignoring the team's century-old motto- arte et labore, or "skill and hard work"-the most talented individuals disdained serious training.

On some level, Faulkner knew the source of the trouble: British soccer culture held that star players are born, not made. If you buy into that view, and are told you've got immense talent, what's the point of practice? If anything, training hard would tell you and others that you're merely good, not great. Faulkner had identified the problem; but to fix it, he needed Dweck's help.

A 60-year-old academic psychologist might seem an unlikely sports motivation guru. But Dweck's expertise-and her recent book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success -bear directly on the sort of problem facing the Rovers. Through more than three decades of systematic research, she has been figuring out answers to why some people achieve their potential while equally talented others don't-why some become Muhammad Ali and others Mike Tyson. The key, she found, isn't ability; it's whether you look at ability as something inherent that needs to be demonstrated or as something that can be developed.

What's more, Dweck has shown that people can learn to adopt the latter belief and make dramatic strides in performance. These days, she's sought out wherever motivation and achievement matter, from education and parenting to business management and personal development.

As a graduate student at Yale, Dweck started off studying animal motivation. In the late 1960s, a hot topic in animal research was "learned helplessness": lab animals sometimes didn't do what they were capable of because they'd given up from repeat failures. Dweck wondered how humans coped with that. "I asked, 'What makes a really capable child give up in the face of failure, where other children may be motivated by the failure?'" she recalls.

At the time, the suggested cure for learned helplessness was a long string of successes. Dweck posited that the difference between the helpless response and its opposite-the determination to master new things and surmount challenges-lay in people's beliefs about why they had failed. People who attributed their failures to lack of ability, Dweck thought, would become discouraged even in areas where they were capable. Those who thought they simply hadn't tried hard enough, on the other hand, would be fueled by setbacks. This became the topic of her PhD dissertation.

Dweck and her assistants ran an experiment on elementary school children whom school personnel had identified as helpless. These kids fit the definition perfectly: if they came across a few math problems they couldn't solve, for example, they no longer could do problems they had solved before-and some didn't recover that ability for days.

Through a series of exercises, the experimenters trained half the students to chalk up their errors to insufficient effort, and encouraged them to keep going. Those children learned to persist in the face of failure-and to succeed. The control group showed no improvement at all, continuing to fall apart quickly and to recover slowly. These findings, says Dweck, "really supported the idea that the attributions were a key ingredient driving the helpless and mastery-oriented patterns." Her 1975 article on the topic has become one of the most widely cited in contemporary psychology.

Attribution theory, concerned with people's judgments about the causes of events and behavior, already was an active area of psychological research. But the focus at the time was on how we make attributions, explains Stanford psychology professor Lee Ross, who coined the term "fundamental attribution error" for our tendency to explain other people's actions by their character traits, overlooking the power of circumstances. Dweck, he says, helped "shift the emphasis from attributional errors and biases to the consequences of attributions-why it matters what attributions people make." Dweck had put attribution theory to practical use.

She continued to do so as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, collaborating with then-graduate student Carol Diener to have children "think out loud" as they faced problem-solving tasks, some too difficult for them. The big surprise: some of the children who put forth lots of effort didn't make attributions at all. These children didn't think they were failing. Diener puts it this way: "Failure is information-we label it failure, but it's more like, 'This didn't work, I'm a problem solver, and I'll try something else.'" During one unforgettable moment, one boy-something of a poster child for the mastery-oriented type-faced his first stumper by pulling up his chair, rubbing his hands together, smacking his lips and announcing, "I love a challenge."

Such zest for challenge helped explain why other capable students thought they lacked ability just because they'd hit a setback. Common sense suggests that ability inspires self-confidence. And it does for a while-so long as the going is easy. But setbacks change everything. Dweck realized-and, with colleague Elaine Elliott soon demonstrated-that the difference lay in the kids' goals. "The mastery-oriented children are really hell-bent on learning something," Dweck says, and "learning goals" inspire a different chain of thoughts and behaviors than "performance goals."

Students for whom performance is paramount want to look smart even if it means not learning a thing in the process. For them, each task is a challenge to their self-image, and each setback becomes a personal threat. So they pursue only activities at which they're sure to shine-and avoid the sorts of experiences necessary to grow and flourish in any endeavor. Students with learning goals, on the other hand, take necessary risks and don't worry about failure because each mistake becomes a chance to learn. Dweck's insight launched a new field of educational psychology-achievement goal theory.

Dweck's next question: what makes students focus on different goals in the first place? During a sabbatical at Harvard, she was discussing this with doctoral student Mary Bandura (daughter of legendary Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura), and the answer hit them: if some students want to show off their ability, while others want to increase their ability, "ability" means different things to the two groups. "If you want to demonstrate something over and over, it feels like something static that lives inside of you-whereas if you want to increase your ability, it feels dynamic and malleable," Dweck explains. People with performance goals, she reasoned, think intelligence is fixed from birth. People with learning goals have a growth mind-set about intelligence, believing it can be developed. (Among themselves, psychologists call the growth mind-set an "incremental theory," and use the term "entity theory" for the fixed mind-set.) The model was nearly complete (see diagram).

Growing up in Brooklyn in the '50s, Dweck did well in elementary school, earning a spot in a sixth-grade class of other high achievers. Not just any spot, it turned out. Their teacher, Mrs. Wilson, seated the students in IQ order and even used IQ scores to dole out classroom responsibilities. Whether Mrs. Wilson meant to or not, she was conveying her belief in fixed intelligence. Dweck, who was in row 1, seat 1, believes Mrs. Wilson's intentions were good. The experience didn't scar her-Dweck says she already had some of the growth mind-set-but she has shown that many students pegged as bright, especially girls, don't fare as well.

Tests, Dweck notes, are notoriously poor at measuring potential. Take a group of adults and ask them to draw a self-portrait. Most Americans think of drawing as a gift they don't have, and their portraits look no better than a child's scribbles. But put them in a well-designed class-as Betty Edwards, the author of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, has-and the resulting portraits look so skilled it's hard to believe they're the work of the same "talentless" individuals. The belief that you can't improve stunts achievement.

Culture can play a large role in shaping our beliefs, Dweck says. A college physics teacher recently wrote to Dweck that in India, where she was educated, there was no notion that you had to be a genius or even particularly smart to learn physics. "The assumption was that everyone could do it, and, for the most part, they did." But what if you're raised with a fixed mind-set about physics-or foreign languages or music? Not to worry: Dweck has shown that you can change the mind-set itself.

The most dramatic proof comes from a recent study by Dweck and Lisa Sorich Blackwell of low-achieving seventh graders. All students participated in sessions on study skills, the brain and the like; in addition, one group attended a neutral session on memory while the other learned that intelligence, like a muscle, grows stronger through exercise. Training students to adopt a growth mind-set about intelligence had a catalytic effect on motivation and math grades; students in the control group showed no improvement despite all the other interventions.

"Study skills and learning skills are inert until they're powered by an active ingredient," Dweck explains. Students may know how to study, but won't want to if they believe their efforts are futile. "If you target that belief, you can see more benefit than you have any reason to hope for."

The classroom workshop isn't feasible on a large scale; for one thing, it's too costly. So Dweck and Blackwell have designed a computer-based training module to simulate the live intervention. Their hip multimedia software, called Brainology, is still in development, but thanks to early buzz from a Time magazine article and Dweck's recent book, teachers have begun clamoring for it, one even asking to become a distributor.

Unlike much that passes for wisdom about education and performance, Dweck's conclusions are grounded in solid research. She's no rah-rah motivational coach proclaiming the sky's the limit and attitude is everything; that's too facile. But the evidence shows that if we hold a fixed mind-set, we're bound not to reach as high as we might.

Although much of Dweck's research on mind-sets has taken place in school settings, it's applicable to sports, business, interpersonal relationships and so on. "Lots and lots of people are interested in her work; it touches on so many different areas of psychology and areas outside of psychology," says Stanford psychology professor Mark Lepper, '66, who as department chair in 2004 lured Dweck away from Columbia, where she'd been for 15 years. "The social psychologists like to say she's a social psychologist; the personality psychologists say she's a personality psychologist; and the developmental psychologists say she's a developmental psychologist," Lepper adds.

By all rights, her appeal should transcend academia, says New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell, who is well known for making psychological research accessible to the general public. "One of the most popular pieces I ever did relied very heavily on work done by Carol Dweck," he said in a December interview in the Journal of Management Inquiry. "Carol Dweck deserves a big audience. It is criminal if she does not get that audience." Perhaps Mindset will help; it was written for lay readers.

It certainly cemented Tony Faulkner's belief that Dweck could help the Blackburn Rovers soccer team. Unlike the disadvantaged kids in Dweck's middle-school study, the Rovers didn't think they lacked what it took to succeed. Quite the opposite: they thought their talent should take them all the way. Yet both groups' fixed mind-set about ability explains their aversion to effort.

But aren't there plenty of people who believe in innate ability and in the notion that nothing comes without effort? Logically, the two ideas are compatible. But psychologically, explains Dweck, many people who believe in fixed intelligence also think you shouldn't need hard work to do well. This belief isn't entirely irrational, she says. A student who finishes a problem set in 10 minutes is indeed better at math than someone who takes four hours to solve the problems. And a soccer player who scores effortlessly probably is more talented than someone who's always practicing. "The fallacy comes when people generalize it to the belief that effort on any task, even very hard ones, implies low ability," Dweck says.

Her advice for the Rovers rings true for anyone stuck in a fixed mind-set. "Changing mind-sets is not like surgery," she says. "You can't simply remove the fixed mind-set and replace it with the growth mind-set." The Rovers are starting their workshops with recent recruits-their youngest, most malleable players. (Faulkner realizes that players who've already earned millions from being "naturals" have little incentive to reshape their brains.) The team's talent scouts will be asking about new players' views on talent and training-not to screen out those with a fixed mind-set, but to target them for special training.

In his 2002 essay that relied on Dweck's work, Gladwell cited one of her best-known experiments to argue that Enron may have collapsed precisely because of the company's talent-obsessed culture, not despite it. Dweck's study showed that praising children for intelligence, rather than for effort, sapped their motivation ( see sidebar). But more disturbingly, 40 percent of those whose intelligence was praised overstated their scores to peers. "We took ordinary children and made them into liars," Dweck says. Similarly, Enron executives who'd been celebrated for their innate talent would sooner lie than fess up to problems and work to fix them.

Business School professor Jeffrey Pfeffer says Dweck's research has implications for the more workaday problem of performance management. He faults businesses for spending too much time in rank-and-yank mode, grading and evaluating people instead of developing their skills. "It's like the Santa Claus theory of management: who's naughty and who's nice."

Leaders, too, can benefit from Dweck's work, says Robert Sternberg, PhD '75, Tufts University's dean of the School of Arts and Sciences. Sternberg, a past president of the American Psychological Association, says that excessive concern with looking smart keeps you from making bold, visionary moves. "If you're afraid of making mistakes, you'll never learn on the job, and your whole approach becomes defensive: 'I have to make sure I don't screw up.'"

Social psychologist Peter Salovey, '80, MA '80, dean of Yale College and a pioneer in the field of emotional intelligence, says Dweck's ideas have helped him think through a controversy in his field. Echoing an older debate about the malleability of general intelligence, some scholars say emotional intelligence is largely inborn, while others, like Salovey, see it as a set of skills that can be taught and learned. "People say to me all the time, 'I'm not a people person,' or 'I'm not good at managing my emotions,'" unaware that they're expressing a fixed mind-set, Salovey says.

Stanford psychology professor James Gross has begun extending Dweck's work to emotions. In a recent study, Gross and his colleagues followed a group of Stanford undergrads as they made the transition to college life. Those with a fixed mind-set about emotions were less able to manage theirs, and by the end of freshman year, they'd shown poorer social and emotional adjustment than their growth-minded counterparts.

As she approaches the end of her third year at Stanford, Dweck has embraced the challenge of cross-country culture shock in a manner consistent with the growth mind-set. Nearby San Francisco provides her with the benefits of a great city, she says, including a dining scene that rivals New York's; and the University supplies a more cozy sense of community. She's also brought a bit of the New York theater scene with her in the form of her husband, critic and director David Goldman. He founded and directs the National Center for New Plays at Stanford.

At the Association for Psychological Science convention in May, Dweck will give the keynote address. The topic: "Can Personality Be Changed?" Her short answer, of course, is yes. Moreover, holding a growth mind-set bodes well for one's relationships. In a recent study, Dweck found that people who believe personality can change were more likely than others to bring up concerns and deal with problems in a constructive way. Dweck thinks a fixed mind-set fosters a categorical, all-or-nothing view of people's qualities; this view tends to make you ignore festering problems or, at the other extreme, give up on a relationship at the first sign of trouble. (The growth mind-set, though, can be taken too far if someone stays in an abusive relationship hoping her partner will change; as always, the person has to want to change.)

These days, Dweck is applying her model to kids' moral development. Young children may not always have beliefs about ability, but they do have ideas about goodness. Many kids believe they're invariably good or bad; other kids think they can get better at being good. Dweck has already found that preschoolers with this growth mind-set feel okay about themselves after they've messed up and are less judgmental of others; they're also more likely than kids with a fixed view of goodness to try to set things right and to learn from their mistakes. They understand that spilling juice or throwing toys, for example, doesn't damn a kid as bad, so long as the child cleans up and resolves to do better next time. Now Dweck and graduate student Allison Master are running experiments at Bing Nursery School to see if teaching kids the growth mind-set improves their coping skills. They've designed a storybook with the message that preschoolers can go from "bad" one year to better the next. Can hearing such stories help a 4-year-old handle a sandbox setback?

Dweck's students from over the years describe her as a generous, nurturing mentor. She'd surely attribute these traits not to an innate gift, but to a highly developed mind-set. "Just being aware of the growth mind-set, and studying it and writing about it, I feel compelled to live it and to benefit from it," says Dweck, who took up piano as an adult and learned to speak Italian in her 50s. "These are things that adults are not supposed to be good at learning."

Read a January 2010 update on this story.

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ONE DAY LAST NOVEMBER, psychology professor Carol Dweck welcomed a pair of visitors from the Blackburn Rovers, a soccer team in the United Kingdom's Premier League. The Rovers' training academy is ranked in England's top three, yet performance director Tony Faulkner had long suspected that many promising players weren't reaching their potential.

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1. This article includes some teaching strategies to stay trauma-informed and provide support to those who have been traumatized.

2. I appreciated knowing the small differences I can make to help those who may be struggling with trauma.

3. I plan to incorporate these strategies in my teaching, and I could refer back to it when I need to support a student who is struggling with a trauma.

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Spotting the Signs: How to Support Students Struggling with Mental Health

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Spotting the Signs: How to Support Students Struggling with Mental Health

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Spotting the signs: How to support students struggling with mental health

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1. This article explains the different traumas that our students may have and some tips on how to get through them.

2. These were somethings that I did not know and would like to be able to apply if necessary.

3. If a student comes to me in need, I'd like to be able to give them some tips on how to work through some things and get them in contact with a counselor.

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1. This article describes what a growth mindset is and how to incorporate it into your teaching.

2. I plan to encourage a growth mindset in my class, and I love these ideas and concepts.

3. These practices are reminders on how to have a growth mindset in my teaching. I plan to incorporate these ideas, but I like to have it on hand in case I need a reminder.

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Weekly Tip: Promoting Growth Mindset

Carol Dweck, a cognitive psychologist at Stanford, and leading expert on mindset research, defines fixed and growth mindset in the following way:

In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They also believe that talent alone creates success-without effort. In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work-brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment.

-Dweck, 2015

In the classroom, the way that we interact with students can influence their beliefs about intelligence and learning and can affect their ability to persist through academic difficulties. Struggle and setbacks do not indicate limited potential; rather, they provide opportunities to reflect and attempt new strategies. In short, to learn. Implementing growth mindset in the classroom also requires a willingness to question and challenge your own fixed mindset practices related to beliefs about your students as well as your own learning and intelligence.

Focus on progress not perfection

Present learning as a process of developing skills through repeated practice.
Communicate to students that intelligence and talent are not fixed for life. They are malleable and, with effort, can be strengthened-like a muscle! Let students know that they have ownership and control of this process.

Prompt students to reflect on work and study strategies in ways that will lead to revision and improvement.

Exam Autopsy (pdf)

Focus on the process of learning and preparation

Reflect on Study strategies leading to revised strategies

Reflect on during exam behavior

Two Stage Exams (pdf)
In a two-stage exam, students take an exam individually and then work in small groups to answer the exam questions collaboratively.

Classroom assessments techniques
Encourage students to understand that teaching and learning are on-going processes that require full participation.

Use portfolios and Folio thinking as assessment tools

Use rubrics as a tool to help students reflect on and improve their skills, not just for giving grades.

Early in the semester I take time to show students work I did when I was an undergrad. During this time, I make a point of explaining that I started where they are currently at. Through conversation and comparison, students can see that I made the same moves they are making currently, and that where they are at is okay. The goal is growth and improvement.

-Aminah Barnes Cannon

Use encouraging language to communicate high expectations.

When giving feedback on an assignment or test: "Many of you ran into trouble at this point. This is very normal. Let's go over it together so you can see how to recognize and work through this kind of problem."

Consider discussing activities and reflecting on results with students by saying something like, "Don't worry if you do not get it right on the first attempt. It simply means that you are in the process of learning. We have all been there."

Think about the language and modeling that you use with students and how it is interpreted.

Send emails to those who have improved to recognize those who may not always be recognized.

Encourage students by discussing how you were once like them and struggled but had to overcome you struggles to find eventual success.

Model the learning process in real time-work through problems with them and show them where you commonly make errors/how you correct those errors.

Resources and further reading

This series of videos and teaching tips is presented by Academic Outreach and Innovation (AOI). We invite you to join the conversation. Share your tips and ask questions through this blog. If you would like these posts to be sent directly to your email each week, subscribe to the listserv by emailing aoi.li@wsu.edu.

For more information or to schedule time with an instructional designer or emerging technologist, contact aoi.li@wsu.edu or request training on demand. You can also visit the Spark Faculty Innovation Studio in room 102 any time from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday through Thursday, during the academic year.

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Carol Dweck, a cognitive psychologist at Stanford, and leading expert on mindset research, defines fixed and growth mindset in the following way: In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They also believe that talent alone creates success-without effort.

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1. This article explains what the CASEL Framework is and has a great interactive model.

2. We used this model a lot in this class and it was nice to have saved.

3. A framework creates a foundation for applying evidence-based SEL strategies to your community. It can help cultivate skills and environments that advance students’ learning and development.

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Foster knowledge, skills, and attitudes across five areas of social and emotional competence;

Establish equitable learning environments and coordinate practices across four key settings that support students' social, emotional, and academic development.

Download more information on the framework (available in and Spanish).

Use our reflection protocol to facilitate a discussion on implementation efforts in your school, district, or other setting.

Read more about the 2020 update to our framework, which highlighted the potential of SEL in promoting educational equity and excellence.

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Communities

Communities. Community partners often provide safe and developmentally rich settings for learning and development, have deep understanding of community needs and assets, are seen as trusted partners by families and students, and have connections to additional supports and services that school and families need. Community programs also offer opportunities for young people to practice their social and emotional skills in settings that are both personally relevant and can open opportunities for their future. To integrate SEL efforts across the school day and out-of-school time, school staff and community partners should align on common language and coordinate strategies and communication around SEL-related efforts and initiatives.
Learn more: CASEL Guide to Schoolwide SEL - Community Partnerships

Families & Caregivers

Families & Caregivers. When schools and families form authentic partnerships, they can build strong connections that reinforce students' social and emotional development. Families and caregivers are children's first teachers, and bring deep expertise about their development, experiences, culture, and learning needs. These insights and perspectives are critical to informing, supporting, and sustaining SEL efforts. Research suggests that evidence-based SEL programs are more effective when they extend into the home, and families are far more likely to form partnerships with schools when their schools' norms, values, and cultural representations reflect their own experiences. Schools need inclusive decision-making processes that ensure that families-particularly those from historically marginalized groups-are part of planning, implementing, and continuously improving SEL.

Schools can also create other avenues for family partnership that may include creating ongoing two-way communication with families, helping caregivers understand child development, helping teachers understand family backgrounds and cultures, providing opportunities for families to volunteer in schools, extending learning activities and discussions into homes, and coordinating family services with community partners. These efforts should engage families in understanding, experiencing, informing, and supporting the social and emotional development of their students.
Learn more: CASEL Guide to Schoolwide SEL - Family Partnerships

Schools

Schools. Effectively integrating SEL schoolwide involves ongoing planning, implementation, evaluation, and continuous improvement by all members of the school community. SEL efforts both contribute to and depend upon a school climate where all students and adults feel respected, supported, and engaged.

Because the school setting includes many contexts-classrooms, hallways, cafeteria, playground, bus-fostering a healthy school climate and culture requires active engagement from all adults and students. A strong school culture is rooted in students' sense of belonging, with evidence that suggests that it plays a crucial role in students' engagement. SEL also offers an opportunity to enhance existing systems of student support by integrating SEL goals and practices with universal, targeted, and intensive academic and behavioral supports. By coordinating and building upon SEL practices and programs, schools can create an environment that infuses SEL into every part of students' educational experience and promotes positive social, emotional, and academic outcomes for all students.
Learn more: CASEL Guide to Schoolwide SEL

Classrooms

Classrooms. Research has shown that social and emotional competence can be enhanced using a variety of classroom-based approaches such as: (a) explicit instruction through which social and emotional skills and attitudes are taught and practiced in developmentally, contextually, and culturally responsive ways; (b) teaching practices such as cooperative learning and project-based learning; and (c) integration of SEL and academic curriculum such as language arts, math, science, social studies, health, and performing arts. High-quality SEL instruction has four elements represented by the acronym SAFE: Sequenced - following a coordinated set of training approaches to foster the development of competencies; Active - emphasizing active forms of learning to help students practice and master new skills; Focused - implementing curriculum that intentionally emphasizes the development of SEL competencies; and Explicit - defining and targeting specific skills, attitudes, and knowledge.

SEL instruction is carried out most effectively in nurturing, safe environments characterized by positive, caring relationships among students and teachers. To facilitate age-appropriate and culturally responsive instruction, adults must understand and appreciate the unique strengths and needs of each student and support students' identities. When adults incorporate students' personal experiences and cultural backgrounds and seek their input, they create an inclusive classroom environment where students are partners in the educational process, elevating their own agency. Strong relationships between adults and students can facilitate co-learning, foster student and adult growth, and generate collaborative solutions to shared concerns.
Learn more: CASEL Guide to Effective SEL Programs

Self-Awareness

Self-awareness: The abilities to understand one's own emotions, thoughts, and values and how they influence behavior across contexts. This includes capacities to recognize one's strengths and limitations with a well-grounded sense of confidence and purpose.

Such as:

Integrating personal and social identities

Identifying personal, cultural, and linguistic assets

Identifying one's emotions

Demonstrating honesty and integrity

Linking feelings, values, and thoughts

Examining prejudices and biases

Experiencing self-efficacy

Having a growth mindset

Developing interests and a sense of purpose

Check out this video from PBS Learning Media for more information.

Self-Management

Self-management: The abilities to manage one's emotions, thoughts, and behaviors effectively in different situations and to achieve goals and aspirations. This includes the capacities to delay gratification, manage stress, and feel motivation and agency to accomplish personal and collective goals.

Such as:

Managing one's emotions

Identifying and using stress management strategies

Exhibiting self-discipline and self-motivation

Setting personal and collective goals

Using planning and organizational skills

Showing the courage to take initiative

Demonstrating personal and collective agency

Check out this video from PBS Learning Media for more information.

Social Awareness

Social awareness: The abilities to understand the perspectives of and empathize with others, including those from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and contexts. This includes the capacities to feel compassion for others, understand broader historical and social norms for behavior in different settings, and recognize family, school, and community resources and supports.

Such as:

Taking others' perspectives

Recognizing strengths in others

Demonstrating empathy and compassion

Showing concern for the feelings of others

Understanding and expressing gratitude

Identifying diverse social norms, including unjust ones

Recognizing situational demands and opportunities

Understanding the influences of organizations and systems on behavior

Check out this video from PBS Learning Media for more information.

Responsible Decision-Making

Responsible decision-making: The abilities to make caring and constructive choices about personal behavior and social interactions across diverse situations. This includes the capacities to consider ethical standards and safety concerns, and to evaluate the benefits and consequences of various actions for personal, social, and collective well-being.

Such as:

Demonstrating curiosity and open-mindedness

Learning how to make a reasoned judgment after analyzing information, data, and facts

Identifying solutions for personal and social problems

Anticipating and evaluating the consequences of one's actions

Recognizing how critical thinking skills are useful both inside and outside of school

Reflecting on one's role to promote personal, family, and community well-being

Evaluating personal, interpersonal, community, and institutional impacts

Check out this video from PBS Learning Media for more information.

Relationship Skills

Relationship skills: The abilities to establish and maintain healthy and supportive relationships and to effectively navigate settings with diverse individuals and groups. This includes the capacities to communicate clearly, listen actively, cooperate, work collaboratively to problem solve and negotiate conflict constructively, navigate settings with differing social and cultural demands and opportunities, provide leadership, and seek or offer help when needed.

Such as:

Communicating effectively

Developing positive relationships

Demonstrating cultural competency

Practicing teamwork and collaborative problem-solving

Resolving conflicts constructively

Resisting negative social pressure

Showing leadership in groups

Seeking or offering support and help when needed

Standing up for the rights of others

Check out this video from PBS Learning Media for more information.

Social & Emotional Learning

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is an integral part of education and human development. SEL is the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.

SEL advances educational equity and excellence through authentic school-family-community partnerships to establish learning environments and experiences that feature trusting and collaborative relationships, rigorous and meaningful curriculum and instruction, and ongoing evaluation. SEL can help address various forms of inequity and empower young people and adults to co-create thriving schools and contribute to safe, healthy, and just communities.

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Our SEL framework, known to many as the "CASEL wheel," helps cultivate skills and environments that advance students' learning and development.