Assessing Social-Emotional Learning – Christina Cipriano

The 2020-21 ALN sessions will explore implications for teaching and assessing in virtual environments. As educators embrace the responsibility to impact learning in new distance, virtual, and hybrid environments necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, we will amplify and enhance what we know about good assessment practice and its ability to support learning.

There are many initiatives at the local and federal level to assess social and emotional learning. It is of paramount importance for practitioners and school administrators to understand their options and the possibilities for assessing student and teacher growth in social and emotional competencies and related development. Assessment is important to any aspect of teaching and learning. What instruments are available to assess social-emotional competencies and skill development? What types of information do they provide, and how can such information be used to support individual students as well as the educators and systems we build to support students? This session will take a look at some of the instruments available, describe the types of scores and other information they provide, and suggest some ways this information might be used to improve the school environment and individual student learning.

The session will address these questions

• What is SEL and why would we assess it?
• How do we assess SEL?
• How does assessing SEL fit in the overall building and district assessment system?

NOTE: A recent article co-authored by Christina Cipriano and Marc Brackett, “Teacher Interrupted: Leaning into Social-Emotional Learning Amid the COVID-19 Crisis,” offers a thoughtful look at the ways we can “lean in” and apply everything we’ve learned about social-emotional learning—for our students and for ourselves.