Social and emotional skills are individual capacities that can be manifested in consistent patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviours and developed through formal and informal learning experiences. They are important drivers of socioeconomic outcomes throughout the individual’s life such as academic success, employability, active citizenship, health and well-being. Educators and policy makers increasingly wish to integrate social and emotional learning into schooling, which creates a strong demand for reliable and valid measurements of these skills.

As expectations towards learning and teaching change, so do assessment needs. While most of the current and widespread tools are self-, teacher- and parent reported questionnaires, this project explores alternatives to this type of measures, by identifying promising approaches and developing state-of-the-art assessment prototypes and protocols.

• Update the conceptual foundations underpinning the OECD framework of social and emotional skills
• Build evidence on impact of social-emotional skills on life outcomes
• Review and analyse the potential of more direct measures of social and emotional skills
• Design protocol and assessment tools that rely on direct measures
• Innovate international assessments for social and emotional skills

Overall, deliver on CERI’s core mission to explore innovative approaches and facilitate bridges between educational research, innovation, and policy development

• Large-scale assessments often use student self-assessment, which can be biased. Alternatives can offer valid and comparable data.
• Smaller studies are trialling more direct assessments. Work is needed to test and translate these innovations on larger, international scales.
• Better understanding of social and emotional skills will lead to better inclusion of these skills in education

For more information, please feel free to reach out to the team at: Rethinking.SES@oecd.org