ACT Newsroom & Blog

The following content is reprinted with permission from CASEL.

By Dana Murano, Jason Way, Cristina Anguiano-Carrasco, Kate E. Walton, and Jeremy Burrus

Most researchers agree that social and emotional skills are a) important, b) can be improved through systematic programming, and c) must somehow be organized and assessed. The belief that these skills must be organized and assessed emphasizes the need for a social and emotional skills framework, of which there are myriad. An ongoing debate concerns whether or not the Big Five personality framework is an appropriate framework through which to organize social and emotional skills. The Big Five factors include conscientiousness (work ethic; organization), agreeableness (kindness; empathy), emotional stability (composure; flexibility), openness (curiosity; analytical thinking), and extraversion (sociability; assertiveness).

Advantages of using the Big Five

The field of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is rife with “jingle” and “jangle” fallacies. Oftentimes the same word is used to describe different skills or different terms are used to describe the same skill. This creates confusion and an inability for efficient communication among SEL professionals. One solution to this problem would be to organize these skills using the Big Five. The Big Five framework can be seen as a kind of “Rosetta Stone”, a well-established taxonomy to which essentially all social and emotional skills can be crosswalked. Whereas one assessment may measure “grit”, another “persistence”, and yet another “organization”, use of the Big Five framework enables us to recognize that all of these skills fall under the Big Five conscientiousness factor. Figure 1 demonstrates how various social and emotional skills can be organized through the lens of the Big Five.
Using this taxonomy as a framework is desirable because the Big Five factors are backed by decades of empirical support, show consistent relationships with desirable outcomes such as success at school and in the workforce, and are cross-culturally universal. Moreover, there is evidence that skills within these factors are malleable to change both across the lifespan and via deliberate intervention. Organizing social and emotional skills into these five “buckets” gives us a parsimonious, yet comprehensive, way of conceptualizing different social and emotional skills and capturing validity evidence. Because of these advantages, large-scale studies like the OCED’s Study on Social and Emotional Skills use this model as their assessment framework.

Figure 1: Example Social and Emotional Skills Organized Under the Big Five Factors

Is the goal of using the Big Five to make all students “the same”?

One concern that is often expressed is that by using the Big Five as an assessment framework, we are essentially trying to make all students’ personalities the same. Although these social and emotional skills can be categorized within a broader taxonomy of personality, social and emotional skills differ from personality traits in that they are context-dependent, include knowledge and attitudes, and can be behaviorally based. A recent studyshows that behaviorally based social and emotional skills predicted long-term outcomes such as college success over and above broader personality factors. We can teach students contextualized skills that fall under the broader skill of conscientiousness, such as the ability to manage time, stay organized, and be persistent in school-related tasks without attempting to alter their personalities. Indeed, educators try to teach these skills to students every day.

The movement toward universal SEL programming also does not suggest that we are trying to homogenize all students in terms of their personalities. What we want is to ensure that all students have the opportunity to develop each of the social and emotional skills that they need in order to be successful. All students can benefit from being able to work well in teams, persevere, be resilient, demonstrate optimism, communicate effectively, and be curious, lifelong learners. Evidence shows that developing social and emotional skills leads to a multitude of positive outcomes, including increased positive attitudes toward school and improved academic performance, as well as a 1:11 cost/benefit rate of return to society. We also know that of all skills valued by employers, half of these are social and emotional in nature. While we maintain the goal of equipping all students with the social and emotional skills they need to succeed, we recognize that some students will excel in different areas than others.

In summary, social and emotional skills are contextualized, behaviorally based skills that can be organized using the empirically supported and cross-culturally validated taxonomy of the Big Five. The goal of SEL is neither to change students’ personalities nor to make students more alike. Rather, SEL aims to provide all students with the skills they need to succeed in school, in the workplace, and in life.

While many educators understand the importance of evaluating students beyond just academic levels, many struggle to find free, evidence-based tools to support the implementation of their programs. Here are four challenges we’ve heard from the field:

Challenge #1: At a public high school near Toledo, Ohio, administrators and counselors select students for honors classes based in significant part on student character or social and emotional strengths. Teachers are asked to rate students’ strengths using a 1-10 scale, but they do not provide any detailed information on what qualifies for each number on that 1-10 scale. How can they differentiate these ratings in a meaningful and consistent way?

Challenge #2: In a district outside of Columbus, Ohio, the district’s leadership has determined the academic and personal attributes they are prioritizing for students’ college and career readiness and are paying particular attention to postsecondary education and the needs of the workforce. These skills have been broadly defined using terms like responsibility and collaboration, and a chunk of time each week is dedicated to supporting students in developing those personal skills. However, they have neither specific evidence-based components of those skills nor developmental standards for those skills.

Challenge #3: At a public high school near Lexington, Kentucky, educators are implementing ACT® Tessera®, a social and emotional learning (SEL) assessment, for the first time with all ninth graders. In addition, educators are dedicating 20 minutes each day for teachers and students to meet and address nonacademic topics. The principal, though, reports that his teachers aren’t sure how they can best help students, after seeing their SEL assessment results, plan and monitor their progress over the course of the year with detailed performance level descriptors for these critically important skills.

Challenge #4: At a Catholic school near Cincinnati, Ohio, the Assistant Principal is preparing the school’s accreditation self-study, a major pillar of which is social and emotional learning. The self-study requires them to explain how the school’s educational programs are tied to standards and how the school evaluates student progress using developmental expectations for student competencies. How can they make sure they address these items for their social and emotional learning pillar?

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Educators facing challenges like those illustrated above can use the ACT® Holistic Framework™ to know where they should target their efforts for growth and evaluation. The ACT Holistic Framework, which emphasizes a broad range of skills and encourages a more expansive vision of the outcomes that help to define student success, is a free and available online.

The ACT Holistic Framework is made up of four domains, one of which is social and emotional skills (aka “behavioral skills”). The behavioral skills domain is divided into six key skill sets, each of which is carefully broken out into two to six components. These components are then broken into subcomponents. The skill sets, components, and subcomponents provide the building blocks for targeted growth and evaluation.

To help educators with implementation of holistic evaluation, ACT Holistic Framework researchers have provided developmentally-differentiated rubrics for the associated behaviors for the following groups: grades 3-5, grades 6-8, grades 9-12, postsecondary, and workforce. There are four levels for each of these groups. Educators can access and reference these rubrics here.

So what can educators do with these free rubrics?

ACT Recommends Points Parents to High Quality Resources Designed to Help Improve Learning

IOWA CITY, IOWA—ACT, Inc., the nonprofit developer of the ACT® test and leading authority in academic measurement, today launched ACT® Recommends™, a free online tool that points parents toward high quality learning resources—recommended by ACT—that can help address their children’s learning needs.

“Parents tell us they feel helpless, even desperate, when their children struggle in school or need assistance with studying or learning,” said ACT Chief Commercial Officer Suzana Delanghe. “They want to help their kids, but they’re not teachers, and they don’t know the best ways to do that. They’re left searching the internet, where they struggle to sort out the good options from the bad. With ACT Recommends, we’re using our expertise to help point them toward the right choices.”

ACT’s recommendation engine helps match the right learning resources to the student’s particular needs. The resources are designed to help students from kindergarten up to 12th grade who have academic issues or who want homework practice or simply enrichment.

Some of the resources are free, while others are available for a fee, with most under $10. Parents may choose the best option for their budget.

The resources featured in ACT Recommends will be researched, tried and approved by ACT’s academic and learning experts. ACT will continue to build out the product catalog, selection criteria and recommendation engine moving forward based on feedback from parents and analysis of learning data.

“This is another step forward in ACT’s evolution toward becoming a learning, measurement and navigation company,” said Delanghe. “We are excited to use learning science experts’ knowledge to match the right kind of learning experience to students’ learning goals.”

ACT Recommends leverages the expert knowledge of learning scientists from ACT’s Innovative Research and Consulting team as well as ACTNext’s strength in data analytics.

When appropriate, ACT Recommends directs students to ACT Academy as well as to other learning resources and specific educators who have demonstrated understanding of the best methods of teaching content covered on the ACT.

ACT launched ACT Academy—a free, online learning platform—earlier this year to help students around the world pinpoint areas of academic weakness, improve their ACT scores and master the core skills they need to prepare for success in college and career. ACT Academy provides students with access to the world’s leading collection of online learning resources. The platform, available at www.academy.act.org, delivers an individualized learning plan tailored to each student’s particular academic needs.

Parents may access ACT Recommends on the ACT website.

The memo urges the following practices, which ACT strongly supports to enable both individuals and society as a whole to find success in tomorrow’s economy:

• “[E]xperiential learning, such as apprenticeships, internships, job-shadows, and other employer-educator partnerships,” a key recommendation in the 2018 ACT Career and Technical Education Policy Platform. CTE is most valuable when students see its connection to the real world, and work-based learning allows students to stay engaged with what they’re learning by understanding how it is relevant to their future jobs.

• “[I]nitiatives that reskill Americans for the jobs of today and the future,” which is recommended in the 2018 ACT Workforce Development Policy Platform. ACT believes strongly that when workers possess essential foundational skills they have a base from which to upskill and/or reskill as needed due to shifting economic and technological developments.
  
  ACT’s commitment in this area will be on full display at the ACT Workforce Summit this coming October. This annual summit brings together workforce professionals, economic developers, educators, industry associations, employers, and ACT Work Ready Communities to strengthen the nation’s employment base.

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The following release has been reprinted with permission from Smart Sparrow.

SAN FRANCISCO, July 31, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- New York University has announced Smart Sparrow as the winner of its first-ever Algorithm for Change competition, designed to surface new applications for artificial intelligence and machine learning in education. In partnership with ACTNext by ACT and Arizona State University, Smart Sparrow was awarded the top prize for Foundations of Science, a set of instructor-facing courseware tools that will leverage machine learning and artificial intelligence to support students struggling in college-level science courses.

NYU's Center for Social Entrepreneurship solicited submissions for artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and augmented reality (AR) solutions that help low income, underrepresented minority, and first-generation students get to and through college. Smart Sparrow was selected from a group 70 submissions, and then joined nine finalists to pitch their ideas before a panel of judges at New York University.

"We're honored to have won the competition. Using Smart Sparrow's learning design platform, instructors and designers have already seen great success improving student outcomes in science courses — for all students, but especially for low income, underrepresented minority, and first-generation students," said Jacqui Hayes, Director of Studio Innovation at Smart Sparrow. "We believe that we can go further still, powering additional scaffolding and adaptivity through machine learning and artificial intelligence."

Only 11% of low income, underrepresented minority, or first-generation students meet the ACT Benchmark in Science, putting them at risk of not succeeding in introductory college courses. Foundations of Science will be a series of introductory science courseware products that focus on teaching science through interesting narratives and case studies, while providing the necessary scaffolding and support so underprepared students to get the remediation they need in the earliest possible phase of their postsecondary education. The products will incorporate machine learning and artificial intelligence to detect when students are struggling with foundation concepts or skills and recommend just-in-time interventions.

Leveraging over a decade of industry and edtech innovation, the Smart Sparrow Learning Design Studio teamed up with AI and ML experts from ACTNext by ACT, the learning innovation arm of the nonprofit organization known chiefly for its college readiness exam, and award-winning science educators from the Center through Education for Exploration at Arizona State University.

"Smart courses, which adapt in response to student behavior and provide instructors with valuable, real-time insights on skill gaps and engagement drop-offs, have an incredible potential to help more student graduate faster," said Dr. Saad M. Khan, Director of AI and Machine Learning at ACTNext. "Foundations of Science is designed to leverage AI and machine learning to help more at-risk learners successfully complete their academic journeys."

About Smart Sparrow

Smart Sparrow is a learning design platform for next-generation courseware. It allows any educator to create amazingly engaging and adaptive learning experiences and then continuously improve them using learner analytics. Students are better supported and more motivated to succeed. Smart Sparrow believes in designing tools that support great teaching and put faculty first to unlock the potential of adaptive learning. Learn more: www.smartsparrow.com

About ACTNext

ACT is a mission-driven, nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people achieve education and workplace success. Founded in 2016, ACTNext is a multidisciplinary innovation unit established by ACT CEO Martin Roorda and led by Senior Vice President Alina von Davier. The group comprises experts in fields ranging from psychometrics and learning sciences to software development, AI & Machine Learning, and data visualization. They operate at the forefront of Computational Psychometrics, a theory and data driven methodology blending the analytical tools of the new millennium with cutting edge work in psychometric research. This unique approach allows them to not only develop innovative solutions to challenging problems and change the very ways in which assessment is traditionally thought of. Together, ACTNext and ACT are working to provide learners with tools and experiences that are more than integrated, personalized, and adaptive; they're working to make them transformational. Learn more: www.actnext.org

About ASU Center for Education Through Exploration

Arizona State University has developed a new model for the American Research University, creating an institution that is committed to access, excellence and impact. The ETX Center at ASU aim to change the practice of teaching and learning by articulating and advancing a new philosophy: teaching through exploration of the unknown rather than through mastery of what is known. We call this philosophy "Education Through eXploration" – or ETX. To promote ETX, they develop and deploy digital learning products and platforms that are engaging, adaptive, and transdisciplinary, to educate-through-exploration effectively and at scale. Learn more: etx.asu.edu

The following content is reprinted with permission from Education Week: High school students who are thinking about becoming teachers would be more interested in the profession if it paid more, according to a new survey from ACT, the college-admissions testing organization.

The survey, which about 2,400 students took during a national ACT administration in the 2017-2018 school year, looks at which students want to be teachers, what's drawing high schoolers to the profession, and what about the job would need to change for more students to express interest....Read More

TOPEKA — Kansas juniors will be able to take the ACT test and WorkKeys assessment for free during the 2018-2019 school year, the Kansas State Department of Education announced Tuesday, Aug. 7.

Kansas joins 18 other state education agencies currently providing the ACT for students.

The ACT test, introduced in 1959, gauges a student’s readiness for success in the first year of college. The test provides standardized data on student achievement and readiness. The no-cost ACT test will be offered statewide Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2019.

The ACT WorkKeys assessments have been used for more than two decades to measure essential workplace skills and help people build career pathways. WorkKeys measures foundational skills, including both hard and soft skills. Every junior in Kansas will have the opportunity to earn an ACT WorkKeys National Career Readiness Certificate. There are three assessments required to qualify for the certificate, ACT WorkKeys applied math; ACT WorkKeys workplace documents; and ACT WorkKeys graphic literacy. The free WorkKeys assessment will be administered statewide Thursday, Feb. 21, 2019.

KSDE recommends that all juniors – as well as those seniors who didn’t have an opportunity to take the assessments during the 2017-2018 school year – take both assessments.

All juniors in Kansas will be able to take the ACT/WorkKeys free of charge during the 2018-2019 school year. Read more here: https://t.co/FOHhyRn1JH

— KS Dept of Education (@ksdehq) August 7, 2018