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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
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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