Strengthening the Validity of Measures of Social-Emotional Learning by Eliciting Authentic Evidence in Classroom-Embedded Contexts

• In Event: Innovative Approaches to Measuring Social Emotional Learning

Abstract

In partnership with educators across six California public schools serving students in grades 6-12, researchers supported development and piloting of practical and scalable classroom-embedded measures to elicit valid and instructionally useful formative evidence of students’ social-emotional competencies in the context of rigorous project-based learning work and exhibitions of learning. We also examined the learning benefits of engaging with these measures for teachers and students. The overall purpose of this study can be summed up by this question: Can we develop valid, instructionally useful, educative, and equitable ways to measure social-emotional learning? An additional line of inquiry we explored is students’ language use and development and its relationship to social-emotional learning.

Authors

• Ruth Chung Wei, Envision Education

• Laura Gutmann, Stanford University