Defining and measuring context-specific socio-emotional learning skills: Experiences from Portugal

• In Event: Unpacking holistic learning – defining and measuring socio-emotional learning

Proposal

Socioemotional skills are crucial for students to thrive in a complex and globalized world. In recent years, mounting evidence has shown that students’ socioemotional skills predict emotional well-being and academic attainment, and are a gateway to employment and active citizenship (Atwell et al., 2022). The OECD (2021) considers these skills as “the weapons against the greatest threats of our time” (p. 3). Despite its increasing importance, there is still limited evidence on whether and how teachers assess students’ socioemotional skills in the school context (McKown, 2019).

In the scope of School 2030—a 10-year participatory learning improvement program based in 10 countries coordinated by the Aga Khan Foundation—we examined how Portuguese teachers define and assess students’ socioemotional skills. In addition, we sought to develop new tools relevant for Portuguese teachers to assess their students’ socioemotional skills.

We conducted six online focus groups with Portuguese teachers to understand: (a) how they define specific socioemotional skills; (b) whether and how they assess these skills; (c) how they would like to assess them in the future. One key pattern that emerged across these focus groups is that teachers place a great value on students’ socioemotional skills, but they use limited tools to assess it. In addition, we found that teachers would prefer assessing these skills using school-based scenarios rather than checklists or observation grids. Based on these focus groups, official documents issued by the Portuguese Ministry of Education, and the latest scientific evidence, we developed a comprehensive set of tools to assess specific socioemotional skills (empathy, relationship building, problem-solving, reconciling tensions, critical thinking, and ethical decision making) in three age cohorts: 5-, 10-, and 15-year-old students. More specifically, we developed school-based scenarios and short scales (both self- and teacher-report).

We will present results from the school-based scenarios and scales that were field-tested by teachers during May and June 2022, with ongoing analysis at the time of preparing this abstract. We are interested in discussing students’ and teachers’ responses and what these tell us about the instruments’ relevance, application and expected use in the context of the Schools2030 work in Portugal.

We developed new assessment tools for students’ socioemotional skills—a field that deserves further attention from both researchers and practitioners. A future goal of our work is to jointly explore with Portuguese teachers how they can use assessment data to inform their teaching practices and enhance students’ socioemotional skills in the school context.

Author

• Ana Camacho, University of Porto