Guiding the Selection and Use of Social-Emotional Learning Assessments to Align With Professional Testing Standards

• In Event: Innovative Approaches to Measuring Social Emotional Learning

Abstract

Assessments can provide PreK-12 educators with useful information about students’ status and growth in desired competencies. In the case of social-emotional learning (SEL) where policies and practices are dynamically evolving, selecting technically sound assessments that appropriately guide practices through valid interpretations of student learning is a new challenge. This session will describe the outcomes of a project funded by the Spencer Foundation to develop a user-friendly technical guidebook for educators when selecting and using SEL assessments. The result is three guides that provide steps and resources for identifying an SEL assessment, questions to ask when evaluating the measurement quality of an SEL assessment, and recommendations for appropriately using an SEL assessment once a high quality measure has been identified.

Author

• Jessica Loraine Jonson, University of Nebraska