150 likes | 248 Views
Dive into theories and methodologies for assessing soft outcomes in education beyond academics. Discover key considerations, tools, and processes to measure emotional wellbeing, relationships, education skills, and more. Explore practical questionnaires and steps for implementation to enhance student growth.
E N D
What’s the difference?Measuring non-academic issues & skills Berni Graham Researcher
Why measure soft outcomes? • Theories about emotional wellbeing underpinning education, eg • Ability to attend • Motivation & aspiration • Readiness to learn • Concentration • Focus and application • In turn: confidence, anxiety .................. • Changes can be quite small • Difficult to objectivy the subjective • Need to measure alongside academic attainment
But............ • What to measure? • AND How to measure it?
HOW - Key considerations • Viewpoints of both staff and children & young people • Decide most appropriate methods: • gather the right information • simple and easy to use (for all parties) • not prohibitively costly • ‘reliable’ • limit bias • systematic • enable comparison for same student over time • enable aggregation of data for different audiences • easy to combine with other information
Options: • Observations; • Qualitative interviews • Questionnaires
Questionnaires Most suitable because: • Relatively cheap • Easy to administer • Lowest risk of subjectivity in administration • Can be done on paper/computer • Can be analysed in part by computer & human • Analysis interpretation more consistent • Data can be aggregated • Facilitate comparisons & comparisons over time
What to measure? • Deciding what areas and issues are most important • Avoid reinventing the wheel • Lots of work previously done around measuring ‘soft’ outcomes for children and young people • Challenge: identifying which of these are most relevant and what others are necessary for an educational context
Process Review existing tools & areas (domains) Discussions with CSS staff 1st broad draft Discussions with CSS staff & pupils Further draft versions considered by staff Redrafting ‘Final versions’
Key areas selected: • Emotional wellbeing (Confidence, self-esteem (incl appearance), ‘resilience’, hope, pride, anxiety, mood) • Relationships (eg with family, peers,..) • Education skills - Concentration & attention • Social & communication skills • Feeling safe (local area, school/ PRU, home...) • Anger management
Next steps • These tools will be trialled by CSS • Test & review over time • Check need for simpler versions for children/ those with difficulty reading • Ideally do large scale testing esp to check -reliability, bias and universality