Development of the Compass Checklist for Elementary Schools: A Tool to Help Teachers Support Students’ Social and Emotional Development

Over the past decade, many U.S. districts and schools have invested in social and emotional learning (SEL) programs. As in other curricular areas, impactful social and emotional learning requires a combination of appropriate content and effective pedagogies, implemented effectively. Even when districts and schools adopt social and emotional learning programs, implementation quality varies within and across schools. Traditionally, practitioners have limited access to measures designed to assess the quality of social and emotional teaching that promotes high-quality, data-driven implementation of social and emotional learning programs. The Compass was developed to address this gap in social and emotional learning measurement. As a practical observational assessment of social and emotional learning pedagogies , the Compass can help educators recognize effective social and emotional teaching strategies (pedagogies) and guide teacher implementation of social and emotional learning to most effectively improve students’ social, behavioral and academic success. This paper describes the mixed-methods, multi-phase development of the Compass in collaboration with education practitioners and transparently details both the challenges and benefits of rigorous measure development with and for practitioners.