It’s no secret that kids deal with enormous amounts of stress — but why do some handle it so much better than others? Social and emotional functioning is a crucial component of student learning. Many experts believe that it is nearly impossible for students to learn if they cannot manage their emotions effectively. Discover how well your students are coping in this domain and learn how to help them improve their functioning in these areas.
How Does Self-Concept Impact Student Learning?
Children and teens go to school to learn history, math, science, and language arts — but they’re also gaining skills in socialization, emotional intelligence, learning who they are as people, and using this self-concept to relate to their peers and the world around them. Kids who have a poor self-concept (which is not quite the same as self-esteem, though these ideas overlap) may not do as well academically.
How Can Assessments Improve a Student’s Social and Emotional Functioning?
Do you have students who are struggling in school? Learn more about how age-appropriate assessments can track and help improve social and emotional functioning.
Assessments Can Determine How a Student is Coping in School
Self-concept and self-esteem are predictors of academic and personal student success. At certain transition points, such as during middle school, it can be highly beneficial to assess kids for social and emotional health to get the most out of their school days. Doing so may prevent mental health issues in students or, at the very least, identify those who are struggling and for what reason. The BIMAS-2 is a universal assessment that can identify students who may need further help.
Assessments Can Alert Educators and Parents to a Problem
There are many reasons why a student may not be performing well in school. One student may have trouble paying attention, another may have a diagnosed learning disability, while another might be struggling to process a significant emotional development such as the birth of a sibling, a traumatic event, or their parents’ divorce. Evaluating students on standardized scales for emotional disturbance, social language, and listening comprehension are just a few of the options you have with WPS to determine why a student may be functioning poorly at a social-emotional level.
Assessments Can Track Students Over Time
After a student is assessed and diagnosed, that same assessment tracks student performance over time. For example, a social responsiveness scale can track the severity of the social component of autism spectrum disorder throughout a student’s childhood and adolescence.
Learn More
Because students’ social and emotional functioning corresponds to student success, it is worth spending the time to assess students who may need help. Educators struggling to teach students dealing with social and emotional issues and administrators developing school-wide prevention-oriented mental health programs can benefit from tools that directly measure social-emotional functioning. Learn more at WPS about how to help students with specific, directed, and scientifically verified assessment tools.
