In recent years, we've been excited to see schools emphasizing social emotional learning (SEL) -- the mindsets, skills, attitudes, and feelings that help students succeed in school, career, and life. From growth mindset to sense of belonging to self-management, SEL plays a critical role in student achievement. And, as I think most of you would agree, social-emotional skills are essential in their own right, as we work hard to develop students as individuals and as learners.
So I'm excited to announce two things: First, after years of research and testing, we are releasing Panorama for Social-Emotional Learning, a new tool to help teachers, principals, and superintendents measure and improve social-emotional learning for their students. Second, as is tradition here at Panorama, we are releasing our social emotional learning survey as a free, open source resource, so that educators across the country can use our research in their classrooms and schools.
For more than two years, SEL has been part of Panorama’s work. Over 1,000 schools have used Panorama to measure social-emotional skills and competencies. Through this work, we have become convinced that SEL is an important part of a well-rounded education, and our educators have found Panorama for SEL to be an important tool for improving education. This fall, we are releasing a coordinated set of SEL measures and analytics on Panorama's platform.
Social Emotional Learning Measures
Panorama's SEL measures have been used with more than 600,000 students in the United States, with strong findings of validity and reliability. Now, we are releasing a set of 22 measures of SEL, freely available for teachers, schools, and districts. Educators can choose which measures to use to understand and improve SEL in their context. We've focused these measures in three areas:
- Student competencies - includes measures of Grit, Growth Mindset, and Self-Efficacy (plus others)
- Student supports and environment - includes Teacher-Student Relationships, Sense of Belonging, School Safety (plus others)
- Teacher skills and perspectives - includes Professional Learning about SEL, School Climate, Resources for School Support (plus others)
The measures were developed by Panorama's research team with support from our research partners at UC Santa Barbara, the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, and the CORE districts. Each measure consists of several questions or prompts for students or teachers. Districts and schools can administer Panorama’s SEL measures to students in six different languages.
Panorama for Social-Emotional Learning
With Panorama for Social-Emotional learning, schools and districts can customize and administer these measures—and then get reports and insights about their campuses.
Panorama’s easy-to-read reports provide a high-level picture of SEL at each school, including strengths and opportunities for growth. Teachers and principals can use Panorama’s reporting and analytics to understand how their schools are doing. District-level analytics tools allow administrators to see results across all schools to identify trends across campuses, target resources, and spot positive outliers in order to learn from successful schools.
Using Panorama's analytics, school and district administrators can view SEL results by topic or by question and explore subgroup breakdowns, including grade level, gender, race/ethnicity, FRPL status, and ELL designation. District and national comparisons provide benchmarks to help administrators understand their SEL results in context and help educators set achievable goals for SEL improvement.
Next Steps
Releasing Panorama's measures and analytics for social emotional learning is an exciting next step—there will be more to come soon. Starting this winter, teachers and schools will have access to Panorama’s professional learning community, Playbook, to find classroom strategies focused on SEL topics. We will continue to work with districts who are interested in evaluating interventions and in exploring correlations between SEL and important academic outcomes, such as attendance, GPA, and test scores.
Thousands of educators have grown their students as individuals by focusing on social-emotional outcomes through Panorama's platform and resources. In the coming weeks and months, we hope many more schools and districts will join us in understanding and developing the mindsets, attitudes, and skills that help students succeed in school and in their lives.
Download our guide to measuring social emotional learning to learn how Panorama districts are embarking on this work.
