Leveraging Socio-Emotional Assessment to Foster Children’s Human Rights

Jacqueline P. Leighton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781000601459
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Behavioural Management

Leveraging Socio-Emotional Assessment to Foster Children's Human Rights focuses on teaching and assessing students' social and emotional attributes within the broader context of children's rights. School teachers are charged with more than just academic development – every day, they have opportunities to guide children toward humanistic, justice-orientated perspectives and to serve as role models and relationship-builders. Built from a growing body of research on the benefits of socio-emotional learning and assessment in classrooms, this book prepares pre-service and in-service teachers to take on the shifting mindset that is required for learning processes that promote dignity and respectful relations in the classroom. These concise, accessible chapters address the value and effects of positive student-teacher relationships, classroom implementation and assessment methods, student- and parent-inclusive feedback and more.

1 Assessing for Wellness and Children’s Rights

DOI: 10.4324/9781003152781-1

This book has a simple goal: That by the time you finish reading it, you will recognize three relatively simple psychological principles about student learning and assessment. Many of you will know these three principles intuitively given your interactions over many years with the children you know and teach. However, what you may not know about intuitively is the growing level of empirical research that supports these three principles. Knowing about the empirical research that supports these principles will allow you to better understand why your practice is useful, how to respond when people question you about your practice and most importantly how to enrich the lives of your students. These principles are aligned within a broader view of children’s basic human rights in the learning domains they inhabit.

This chapter begins with some of the basics – working definitions, scope of assessment tools and rationale for considering assessment alongside children’s human rights. Although this book cannot cover or cite the broad research literature on the subject of social and emotional assessment, and children’s human rights, the chapter includes some of the most germane, rigorous and lucid works in support of the principles presented.

Before we delve into the details of this work, an important idea must be kept in mind throughout while reading the chapters. The idea is this: children’s social and emotional readiness and wellness does not begin or end in the classroom. Children’s social and emotional health is affected by many environments. Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological model (Bronfenbrenner & Ceci, 1994) shown in Figure 1.1 is often used to guide psychological and even medical practitioners in understanding human development generally and in supporting children’s physical and mental wellness specifically (Hamwey, Allen, Hay & Varpio, 2019). Figure 1.1 shows that there are many environmental systems that impact the child. The microsystem impacts the child directly (e.g., parents and teachers). Most of the book is focused at this level as we discuss what happens in the classroom. However, children’s lives are also significantly affected by the mesosystem, which includes interactions of microsystems such as how parents and teachers relate to each other. At a more distal level, the exosystem contains larger institutions such as public health, which impact how children are protected and treated during moments of crisis. The macrosystem and chronosystem involve the cultural values of how children are viewed and treated, and the historical context in which children happen to be born, respectively. Throughout the book, multiple systems will be relevant but consideration of the microsystem and the macrosystem will be especially critical. This is because classroom assessment occurs in the microsystem, but a children’s human rights approach to assessment involves societal values and beliefs about children and their treatment. This perspective, then, puts us in the macrosystem. Although I will not continually mention these systems throughout the book, I do wish for these to be maintained in your minds as you consider the assessment of social and emotional wellbeing in children. I return to this idea at the very end of the book in Chapter 5.

Figure 1.1 Urie Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Systems Model. Image by Ian Joslin is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Social and Emotional Assessment in the Context of Children’s Rights: Three Principles

The three principles that form the basis of this book are shown as follows:

PRINCIPLE 1. There is little cognitive learning for children without social and emotional readiness and wellbeing. Some children need help acquiring the social and emotional competencies, attributes, and/or skills that will help them achieve a state of social and emotional readiness and wellbeing for learning.

PRINCIPLE 2. Social and emotional readiness and wellbeing can be formally or informally measured to yield data and inform interpretations about what is in the best interest of students. Students are rights holders in their own learning. These data can be used to facilitate children’s acquisition of social and emotional competencies, attributes and/or skills in classrooms.

PRINCIPLE 3. Facilitating children’s acquisition of social and emotional competencies, attributes and/or skills in the classroom requires earning children’s trust. Trust comes about when teachers recognize and nurture their role as secondary attachment figures and as duty bearers in the lives of children.

These principles are not based on anecdotes and are not subject to the styles or whims of different teachers or researchers. The principles are simply necessary for children, and in fact, all human beings to learn. Those teachers who have worked with children for many years will appreciate the plainness of these principles. Some of you may not need or even wish to know about the empirical research that underlies these principles. However, knowing the relevant research literature matters. Knowing the research can be helpful – especially because it provides the evidence for explaining to others what you do in the classroom with the children you teach and why you do it. Moreover, these principles, when they are internalized into a teaching and assessment “mindset,” can provide an extensive repertoire of ideas and resources for practice.

I will come back to these three principles repeatedly throughout this chapter and in the balance of this book. The aim is to show the growing empirical evidence for these three principles. With examples, moreover, you will see beyond the abstraction of the words and perceive the pattern or frame that emerges when these three principles work in concert. The pattern should inform a teacher’s mindset for cultivating a learning environment wherein children’s social and emotional competencies, attributes and/or skills are entrusted, measured and enriched to facilitate their learning.

Socio-Emotional Readiness and Wellbeing, Assessment and Pedagogical Alliances

Definition of Social and Emotional Readiness and Wellbeing

The first principle indicates that there is little cognitive learning for children without social and emotional readiness and wellbeing. I use the term social and emotional readiness and wellbeing instead of the usual social-emotional learning because the former term is more delimited than the latter. According to Weissberg, Durlak, Domitrovich, and Gullotta (2015, p. 6), social and emotional learning formally includes “competencies to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show caring and concern for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions” (p. 6). However, Weissberg et al.’s use of the noun “learning” is too broad in scope given their definition. Learning can, technically, include the acquisition of positive and negative knowledge and skills. For example, children can learn to become excessively anxious during exam time. However, this is not a positive social and emotional learning outcome for many children. The substantive content of Weissberg et al.’s definition is intended to be positive and so is better aligned with the term “readiness and wellbeing” rather than “learning;” and, in fact, their definition is generally focused on helping the child become ready and well enough to learn.

At this juncture, a digression is needed. It involves acknowledging two legitimate concerns raised by Hoffman (2009) in her review of trends in social and emotional ‘learning’ in the United States. Both have an impact on the definition of children’s social and emotional readiness and wellbeing. The first concern involves the emphasis on the measurability of social and emotional competencies. Emphasis on measurability involves issues of whether feasible and psychometrically reliable and valid tools can be developed to measure aspects of the intended competencies, for example, social collaboration or emotional regulation. Although measurability of constructs is typically considered a desirable feature to evaluate potential pedagogical interventions and their outcomes, the focus on measurability can eclipse some social and emotional competencies that are difficult to measure. For example, consider the experience of trust between teachers and students. Trust between students and teachers is a central experience in the creation of a nurturing learning environment, but it is difficult to measure. Indeed, some teachers may even eschew its measurement because of worries that students’ evaluations may be unflattering (Leighton, 2021). The second concern of Hoffman (2009) involves a universalist assumption that certain social and emotional competencies are preferable over others. For example, competencies involving the management of emotions to keep calm and high levels of expression to show care for others may be preferred in North American cultures, but these may not be preferred in other cultures. Hence, the concern is that tools and criteria used to assess children’s social and emotional competencies will not consider a breadth of culturally appropriate competencies for children. To this end, Hoffman (2009) has specifically critiqued the term social and emotional “learning” for its ambiguity and raised the question of what competencies or attributes¹ should fall under the scope of this type of “learning.” Hoffman’s (2009) critique is germane and consequential to the present discussion. Thus, I will come back to it repeatedly throughout the book. Notwithstanding Hoffman’s critique, emphasizing ways to create caring and nurturing learning environments for children and exploring culturally appropriate measures of social and emotional competencies are desirable goals in my view.

Considering Weissberg et al.’s definition (2015) again, the competencies they delineate (i.e., understanding and managing emotions, setting and achieving positive goals, feeling and showing caring and concern for others, establishing and maintaining positive relationships, and making responsible decisions) should not be considered exhaustive or necessarily appropriate for all children. Other competencies could be added with varying levels of specificity given the children with which a teacher is working; for example, competencies to deescalate conflict, feel comfortable showing emotion, reflect on personal biases and express anger in constructive ways may be appropriate for some or all children.

Definitions are obviously useful to achieve a shared sense of understanding. However, the challenge with definitions is that the process of defining terms can create artificial boundaries. There is little doubt that we need to be precise about the social and emotional competencies being measured at any given time, but we must also acknowledge that specific social and emotional competencies are likely to be selected and specified for particular purposes. In other words, context is key in the teaching and assessment of these competencies.² A definition that is assumed to be applicable in all situations is not realistic or helpful to teachers or students. Depending on the needs of the student, the situation and the availability of specific tools, only then can particular social and emotional competencies be identified, defined, assessed and addressed specifically. Not everything that potentially falls under the umbrella term of social and emotional readiness and wellbeing may be measured nor relevant at one time. Thus, for the purpose of this book, I use the following conceptual definition of social and emotional readiness and wellbeing:

Social and emotional readiness and wellbeing consists of two inter-related processes. The first process is social and involves being part of a group of learners that collaborates for the purpose of achieving learning goals. This process requires students to acquire ways of behaving that allow them to advance their own learning without hindering the learning of others. The second process is emotional and involves developing a sense of awareness about how to use affect – both negative and positive – constructively to achieve desired learning goals. The operationalization of these processes depends on the specific situation and students of interest.

Coming back to the first principle, then, the substance of it requires us to recognize that productive social and emotional competencies are not going to be the same for all students. Moreover, these competencies serve as a foundation for helping students find their own state of wellness and readiness to engage with classroom instruction and assessment. This first principle also implies that even the best content and curricular frameworks are not sufficient to enhance student academic performance if students lack the social and emotional readiness and wellness to interact with the instruction...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Assessing for Wellness and Children’s Rights
• 2 Trust and Its Effect on Children’s Social and Emotional Wellness
• 3 Assessment Data from a Children’s Rights Approach
• 4 Keeping Your Eye on the Prize to Support Children
• 5 The Assessment Elephant in the Room: When Societies Discount Children
• Index