Assessments
PEAR has developed and hosts a variety of assessment tools used to measure social-emotional development and science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) attitudes in classrooms and out-of-school-time programs.
SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
The Holistic Student Assessment
The Holistic Student Assessment (HSA) is a data-driven tool to promote social-emotional development in young people in school and afterschool settings. The self-report tool provides teachers, program staff, and administrators with a social-emotional “portrait” of the unique strengths and challenges of each young person. Data can be reported at individual, classroom, school, and district levels. The HSA can be administered to students at different times in the year.
STEM OUTCOMES AND QUALITY
The Common Instrument Suite
The Common Instrument Suite (CIS) is a self-report survey that measures a variety of STEM-related attitudes, including STEM interest/engagement, STEM career knowledge, and STEM identity. This tool was specifically developed with informal/outside-of-school time (OST) STEM programs in mind, but it is flexible enough to use in school as well. The purpose of this survey is to better understand how informal STEM programming impacts students’ perceptions/attitudes towards STEM. This survey complements the Dimensions of Success (DoS) STEM program quality tool, as we have found that higher ratings of quality using DoS is associated with larger gains in student outcomes using CIS.
Dimensions of Success
Dimensions of Success (DoS) is a suite of tools and guides designed to help out-of-school-time (OST) programs (e.g., afterschool programs, summer camps, etc.) improve the quality of their STEM offerings. It was developed and studied with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) by PEAR, along with partners at Educational Testing Services (ETS) and Project Liftoff. The DoS suite of tools allows researchers, practitioners, funders, and other stakeholders to track the quality of STEM learning opportunities and to pinpoint strengths and weaknesses.