Social-Emotional Competence as Support for School Readiness: What Is It and How Do We Assess It?

The overall issue of assessment during early childhood, and its relation to school readiness and other decisions, is currently widely debated. Expanding early childhood education and child care enrollments, better scientific knowledge about early childhood development, and decisions about public spending, necessitate careful consideration of which assessment tools to use, as well as why and when to use them. More specifically, the disconnection between the importance of social and emotional domains of development, and their status within educational programming and assessment, has long been lamented. The last several years have, however, witnessed a blossoming of attention to these areas during early…