Measuring the Difficult to Measure: School Culture and Social and Emotional Learning

Group Submission Type: Panel Session

Proposal

The theme of the CIES 2018 conference, “Re-mapping Global Education” highlights the importance of broadening the source of knowledge generation and a focus on ‘theories and methodologies produced in the global South’. This panel focuses on the some of the most challenging measures, and what we learn from the geographical and social context as we adapt existing instruments and develop new measures in new settings where they are needed.
In addition to building academic skills, education plays an important role in nurturing a child’s social and emotional development and to nurture specific social competencies such as problem solving and resilience. Rather than specific curriculum for building social skills, social and emotional learning (SEL) is best fostered as a natural outcome of a school culture that models and reinforces the social skills that are needed for a child to successfully navigate his world everyday, make healthy choices related to their education and social interactions, and achieve their dreams. Thus school culture and climate, students’ social emotional development, and academic performance are inter-connected and interdependent.
Education programming around the world, from pre-primary through secondary school, is beginning to address the social and emotional requirements of students alongside academic programs, and good measurements are needed for researching new models for different country contexts and for evaluating outcomes. The development of relevant performance indicators and tools for measuring elements of the school culture that nurture social and emotional learning can be challenging. Equally challenging is the task of developing key indicators and tools for measuring these social skills that support academic development and a healthy transition into adulthood, especially in low and middle-income countries. Drawing from experiences in Uganda, Tanzania and Nigeria, presenters in this panel will discuss these challenges, introduce new approaches, and seed participant discussions about adopting measures of school culture and social competencies across country boundaries and different contexts.

Sub Unit

• SIG: Cultural Contexts of Education and Human Potential (CCEHP)

Chair

• Maung Nyeu, Harvard University

Individual Presentations

• Assessing social and emotional learning in young children in Tanzania - Matthew Jukes, RTI International

• Using game-based assessment to measure soft-skills - Lee Eric Nordstrum, RTI International

• Adaptation, piloting, and validation of SEL measures in Nigeria - Autumn Brown, International Rescue Committee

• Insights about how cultural differences condition student response on a survey of student perception of school climate - Peter Muyingo, RTI International

Discussant

• Nikhit D'Sa, Save the Children