SEL FORWARD
Social and Emotional Learning Towards Meaningful Social Contribution
Assessment Guide
This curriculum will assess students in various ways. Given that it is a flexible and negotiated curriculum, the proposed assessments only serve as a guide for teachers and implementers. Upon diving into the curriculum, both teachers and students must be involved in further developing the criteria for each of the assessments based on the negotiated activities. Adopters of this curriculum must be sensitive to the demographics and cultural backgrounds of the students and should revise and improve assessment contents to make it culturally relevant to the learners. Most importantly, it is crucial to take note that contents of the assessments must be revised to adapt to the ever changing cultures of their students through various ways such as the inclusion of relevant events of the community that students belong (Ladson-Billings, 2014, p.75).
The forms of assessments are designed to assess students’ deep understanding about themselves and their relationships with others and how these understandings help them to become more aware of their surroundings. Only by becoming aware of the their surroundings can students realize social injustices that may have penetrated their contexts. Emerging from these understandings are the ways we think, act and create social change. It is due to the nature of this curriculum and the goals that it presents that assessments are designed based on performance measures, reflections and deep understandings and not high-stakes tests. Including tasks that require students to craft their own responses and build on their knowledge as a class rather than merely selecting multiple-choice answers taps on students’ advanced and deep thinking skills and ability to analyze and reason which yields a better picture of their cognitive growth (Darling-Hammond, 2014, p. 9).
©2018 Bhavi Doshi, Alice Kahng, Joan Calandria-Nelson and Paulo Ribeiro
Teachers College, Columbia University