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Core SEL Competencies as defined by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL)

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Why Social and Emotional Learning is Essential for All Students

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Why Social and Emotional Learning is Essential for All Students

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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But what would you do with it?
In sharing a series of posts over the past several weeks about the rising demand for social emotional learning (SEL) measurement and noncognitive skills assessment, we noted that new methods are emerging for doing it effectively.

Still, some are wondering what a typical (or atypical) school or district would do with the data and reports they received after administering such an assessment to their students?

Because noncognitive assessment is still so new to schools, one answer to this question is we don't yet know. We anticipate that five years from now we may be astounded by the diverse and innovative ways in which educators wield what we believe will be a powerful and creative tool.

Nevertheless, we can speculate about how measuring and assessing noncognitive skills and character strengths might valuably assist educators, both in bolstering students' social and emotional skills and elevating their academic skills and traditional test scores.

Top 10 Ways to Use SEL Measurement and Assessment of Noncognitive Skills

1. Affirming strengths of schools and districts. Many schools and districts have made substantial investments in supporting their students' social and emotional learning. They've shown strong leadership, established core values, signaled different priorities, allocated previous resources, maintained student counseling in the face of budget shortfalls, trained teachers and implemented new curricular and instructional strategies.

Wouldn't it nice if these leaders could collect evidence of the impact of their actions and better demonstrate the effects of their efforts? Affirmation matters: it confirms to these schools, districts and their funders that they are on the right track, and better allows them to take their rightful place in the vanguard of SEL educational programming.

2. Determining greatest opportunities for improvement. Whether we're preparing a school improvement plan, planning for re-accreditation, selecting a new administrator or undertaking strategic planning, we are often looking for the greatest opportunity for improvement. Often this opportunity lies in SEL-but where, exactly? Measuring your students' noncognitive skills and studying the results can illuminate what should top your agenda in the next phase of your institution's evolution.

3. Analyzing data to determine which noncognitive skills might best boost academic achievement. SEL is both an end in itself and a means to an end. When evaluating how to improve academic achievement, sometimes we miss the mark by looking only at the testing results. Consider how studying which noncognitive skills are positively and negatively correlated with achievement-and drilling down to locate the correlations among your underperforming subgroups-might uncover new avenues to improving proficiency. For instance, you might find that poor math scores among middle school boys highly correlate with low organization skills and arrive at a new strategy for improvement.

4. Monitoring impact of interventions. Say a new superintendent or principal arrives, boldly announcing a critical new academic program she will implement for improved college readiness skills-perhaps project-based learning, advisory programs or responsibility training. How will the new leader and her supervisors know whether the new program (intervention) is working? Imagine the ability to administer a SEL assessment to students both before and after the initiative and compare the results.

5. Providing metrics for school improvement and district/school strategic plans. During strategic planning, school-leaders often hear from business-trained board members, "what will be your metrics?" Now you have your answer: our SEL measurements will generate metrics on the impact of our character development, student leadership skills or college readiness strategic initiatives.

6. Subgroup analysis for discerning and closing gaps. When it comes to academic achievement, equity is at the top of many educational leaders' agendas. For social and emotional learning it should be just as much so. To close these gaps, we need to know where they exist and whether or not what we're doing is working.

7. Identifying high performing schools as best practice exemplars. In California, the CORE districts have implemented new efforts to pair low-performing schools (both in academics and in SEL) with demographically similar higher-performing schools for coaching and mentoring. Data comparing schools and success rates are required to do so.

8. Providing teachers guidance about their students. When many teachers in middle and high schools have well over 100 students in their care, it's hard for them to quickly appreciate the strengths and limitations of each one. An assessment tool can reveal which children will benefit from support in teamwork, curiosity and resilience so teachers may tailor their teaching accordingly.

9. Formative assessment for individual student growth. Few things are more valuable for student growth, as Hattie says, than "dollops of feedback." Our children deserve regular, ongoing, external, reliable and validated reports of how they're doing and how they can do better. SEL assessment can give teachers the data they need to provide students with ongoing feedback.

10. Empowering students with knowledge and data for goal-setting, growth, strategies and monitoring. We need to help students become, as Ron Berger has written, "leaders of their own learning." By providing students with easily understood reports about their strengths and opportunities (with embedded guidance and strategies), we can help students take responsibility for their growth and give them systems for monitoring their development.

This list is by no means exhaustive. Even as it was being prepared, colleagues weighed in with further suggestions (e.g., accreditation-reaccreditation, turning the assessments towards the teachers to ensure they too had these skills-not for accountability per se, but so they know they model these for the students).

So what do you think? Are there still further uses we should consider? Any cautions? Caveats? We welcome feedback to sharpen our ideas and ultimately reach a critical consensus.
This post is part of a blog series on measuring SEL and non-cognitive skills produced in partnership with ProExam (@proexam). Join the conversation on Twitter using #SEL. For more in this series, see: Jonathan E. Martin is Strategic Implementation Advisor to ProExam Tessera™ and an educational writer and consultant. Follow him on Twitter: @JonathanEMartin. Stay in-the-know with all things EdTech and innovations in learning by signing up to receive the weekly Smart Update . This post includes mentions of a Getting Smart partner. For a full list of partners, affiliate organizations and all other disclosures please see our Partner page

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10 Ways Educators Can Use SEL Measurement and Assessment for Student Success

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But what would you do with it? In sharing a series of posts over the past several weeks about the rising demand for social emotional learning (SEL) measurement and noncognitive skills assessment, we noted that new methods are emerging for doing it effectively.

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There are gaps in the research on the SEL development of adults and the impact on student outcomes and school climate. I will continue to research this since it a major consideration for most educational programs.

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Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, 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. Systemic SEL is promoted across multiple contexts every day. SEL is more than just a program or lesson. It is about how teaching and learning happens, as well as what you teach and where you learn.

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The feelings and attitudes that are elicited by a school’s environment are referred to as school climate. Although it is difficult to provide a concise definition for school climate, most researchers agree that it is a multidimensional construct that includes physical, social, and academic dimensions.

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I will be focusing on equity related topics such as:
1) The importance of bringing SEL to marginalized students
2) How SEL can be a buffer for students whose backgrounds include adverse childhood experiences (ACEs)
3) How SEL helps provide equitable learning environments for all students regardless of socio-econimic factors, etc.

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I will focus on the importance of SEL for adults and its impact on school climate

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Prosocial behaviors are those intended to help other people. Prosocial behavior is characterized by a concern for the rights, feelings, and welfare of other people. Behaviors that can be described as prosocial include feeling empathy and concern for others and behaving in ways to help or benefit other people.

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Academic achievement represents performance outcomes that indicate the extent to which a person has accomplished specific goals that were the focus of activities in instructional environments, specifically in school, college, and university. School systems mostly define cognitive goals that either apply across multiple subject areas (e.g., critical thinking) or include the acquisition of knowledge and understanding in a specific intellectual domain (e.g., numeracy, literacy, science, history).

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Employability skills are a set of skills and behaviors that are necessary for every job. Employability skills are sometimes called soft skills, foundational skills, work-readiness skills, or job-readiness skills.

Employability skills allow you to:

communicate with coworkers

solve problems

understand your role within the team

make responsible choices, and

take charge of your own career

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The purpose of the research is to summarize the prevailing research related to social emotional learning in K-12 education. The specific focus of the literature review is on the impact of systematic social emotional learning on the school climate of elementary schools. Further, the literature identifies how social emotional learning can promote equitable learning environments. As a part of the research, this literature review supports social emotional learning’s ability to promote positive outcomes for students in K-12 education settings and in becoming college and career ready.

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Given the importance of educating the whole child, school districts look toward systematic social emotional learning instruction to provide students with the skills associated with positive academic and life outcomes.  Systematic programming changes in schools are large undertakings which take time, money, and effort.  This requires school entities and educational leaders to look for reliable evidence to support the use of social emotional learning programs to help students grow towards becoming responsible citizens.

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As educational institutions take a systematic approach toward teaching the whole child through social emotional learning, questions regarding the goals of social emotional learning and its impact are often brought forth by stakeholders.  Currently, CASEL and American Institutes for Research (AIR) have provided states with steps to write policies and guidelines to support social emotional learning.  As social emotional learning frameworks and standards are adopted by states and school districts, it is important for all stakeholders to understand the potential impacts on school climate.

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Overview of my Research Area of Interest

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1. Does the implementation of systematic social-emotional learning opportunities have a

positive impact on school climate for elementary staff and students?

2. Does the implementation of systematic social-

emotional learning opportunities provide more equitable learning environments for elementary age students?

3. Does the implementation of systematic social-emotional learning opportunities improve

academic engagement and performance for elementary age students?

4. What role does school leadership play in the development of

systematic social-emotional

learning opportunities?

5. How can systematic social

-emotional learning instruction prepare students to be college

and career ready?

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* Elementary Assistant Principal

* Former special education teacher
* Behavior Specialist
* Husband and father of two :)