Measuring Social-Emotional Learning in Music Education

The purpose of this paper is to recommend possible approaches for incorporating social-emotional learning into music education assessment practices. A resounding argument for music in the schools is that music promotes benefits such as social-emotional development, self-esteem, community and belonging, creative thinking, mental health and wellbeing, and expression of the human experience. However, those phenomena are not typically included as assessment criteria in evaluating student growth and progress. Instead, music education assessment has focused largely on standards-based attributes at the detriment of qualities that make musical participation enjoyable. In this paper, we consider how to assess music while measuring students’ social-emotional learning (SEL). Keywords: assessment, music education, social-emotional learning