CASEL Practice Assessment
Tools
- CASEL
Practice Rubric for Schoolwide SEL Implementation. This tool
helps schools assess their progress through three main stages
of implementation
- The toolkit portion of CASEL’s
Sustainable Schoolwide SEL: Implementation Guide and Toolkit
also includes a personal assessment and reflection tool for school
leaders (tool 6); an SEL teacher competencies assessment form
(tool 25); a self-assessment tool for identifying existing school
practices (tool 13); and an instructional strategies checklist
(tool 33), as well as a variety of professional development and
implementation planning tools.
- Self-Assessment
Guide Originally appearing in CASEL's book, Promoting
Social and Emotional Learning: Guidelines for Educators,
this guide is designed to help you reflect on SEL practices at
your school. The questions ask about SEL goals and activities,
classroom-based SEL skills instruction, SEL coordination and integration,
and SEL planning and evaluation.
- 10
Guidelines to Effective SEL Practice. Use the CASEL Guidelines
as an SEL practice checklist.
Baldridge National Quality Program's 2004 Educational Criteria
for Performance Excellence
This framework for comprehensive school-wide improvement (it is
not SEL-focused) is based on research on effective schools and organizational
functioning. It is updated annually in accordance with the latest
research in these areas, and in effect provides a quick study of
these factors. Although it is designed to rate a school's current
practices, it is at least as much an intervention as an assessment
tool. As you will see, the questions are very open-ended and detailed.
Typically, schools carry out the assessment over the course of several
years. Following an initial self-assessment during which the dimensions
or criteria are introduced, schools establish committees to create
changes related to the various criteria. The process also involves
interim self-assessments until the participants are fully prepared
to present their findings to the Baldridge Program evaluation panel.
The framework is available
for download.
Center on the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning Inventory of Practices for Promoting Children's Social Emotional Competence
This tool is designed to be used by individuals and/or teams to plan a course of action to address four general areas: (a) building positive relationships, (b) creating supportive environments, (c) social emotional teaching strategies, and (d) individualized intensive interventions. The Inventory encourages individual self-reflection, opportunities for teaming between classroom teachers, mentor coaches, supervisors, site directors, and other administrators, and promotes effective practices for direct service staff. Each of the four general areas includes several Skills and Indicators reflective of practices that promote social emotional competence in young children.
The Center website also offers numerous other practice supports, including video clips, training modules, and PowerPoints.
Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS)
The Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) is an observational
instrument developed at the University of Virginia to assess classroom
quality in preschool through twelfth grade classrooms. The 11 dimensions
measured by the CLASS focus on the quality of teachers’ emotional,
organizational, and instructional interactions with students in
the classroom. The CLASS has been validated in several large studies,
demonstrating that children make more academic progress in classrooms
characterized by positive and sensitive interactions among peers
and teachers, effective organization of time and behavior, and consistent
instructional feedback and support of higher level cognition (e.g.,
analysis, reasoning). The CLASS measure and training materials are
currently available for preschool to third grade classrooms.
You can download sample PreK materials for free, or purchase the
PreK-3 manual for $20 at their
website.
World Health Organization's Psychosocial Environment Profile
As part of its Information Series on School Health, WHO has created
an extensive school social-emotional climate survey, Creating an
Environment for Emotional and Social Well-Being, that is easy to
administer, fill out, and score. In addition to the survey instrument,
it includes a short background section that summarizes research
demonstrating the benefits schools gain from attending to climate
issues, gives suggestions on how the survey should be administered,
specifies how the data can be used to improve school climate, and
includes worksheets for leading discussions on each of the seven
areas of climate assessed. The seven areas are:
- Providing a friendly, rewarding, and supportive atmosphere
- Supporting cooperation and active learning
- Forbidding physical punishment and violence
- Not tolerating bullying, harassment, and discrimination
- Valuing the development of creative activity
- Connecting school and home life
- Promoting equal opportunities and participation
The profile is available
free of charge. | 
