The Global Institute's Research and Learning Lab, an initiative of Teach For All, is proud to introduce the Holistic Student Outcomes Measurement Toolkit. This toolkit addresses a critical gap in education—guidance on how to effectively measure the holistic development of students. Holistic student development encompasses a broad spectrum of academic and non-academic outcomes, including cognitive, foundational, social, emotional, physical, and creative growth. These holistic student outcomes are aligned with the Teach For All network’s Teaching As Collective Leadership (TACL) framework.
Despite global recognition of the importance of these diverse skills, there remains a significant dearth of resources to support education systems, teachers, and teacher developers in prioritizing and assessing this holistic development. Our toolkit provides practical guidance, measurement tools, and real-world case studies from across the Teach For All network, empowering educators and system leaders to better understand and foster students as leaders of a better future.
The goal of this toolkit is to equip teachers with the insights and tools to support students holistically. By measuring holistic outcomes, educators gain vital feedback and data essential to:
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Empower teachers to refine their instructional practices and make more impactful decisions in their classrooms;
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Adapt and contextualize instructional approaches that foster holistic outcomes to specific contexts;
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Research the often positive interplay between academic foundational skills and social-emotional learning
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Advance our collective understanding of which teacher development interventions are most effective in promoting holistic learning growth, and under what conditions;
This toolkit offers a rich collection of insights and resources on measuring student leadership outcomes, drawn from the lived experiences of over a dozen network partner organizations and extensive research into external resources. These insights also reflect the cutting-edge efforts of the Global Working Group on Holistic Student Outcomes Measurement. While this resource focuses specifically on student-level measurement and monitoring, we acknowledge that effective holistic development requires an integrated approach that also considers teacher, school, family, caregiver, and systems-level factors. The Research and Learning Lab is committed to continuously learning from exemplary practices at the teacher, school, and systems levels and will develop further resources to triangulate student learning for the ultimate goal of fostering teachers who holistically support their students.
We believe that advancing the field of holistic student outcomes measurement requires collaborative effort. We warmly invite teacher developers, systems leaders, and researchers to engage with us in further discussions and explorations. Please reach out to Robbie Dean and Alvin Vista to connect and contribute to this vital work.
What is the SMT and why is it important?
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The SMT is an online platform featuring partner-contributed, co-created, and curated monitoring and measurement approaches and insights.
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It compliments the TACL-aligned Student Leadership Measurement Library and the upcoming new initiative called the Student Outcomes Holistic Item Pool.
Intended Impacts of the SMT
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Provide a public good to our network and beyond of curated evidence-based classroom innovations and practices that develop student outcomes linked with the TACL framework.
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To enable strengthened global learning loops and feedback on teacher leadership and student leadership development by establishing a network-level repository of evidence-based classroom innovations and practices that can be globally accessed and locally applied.
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To facilitate rigorous research on student impact by aligning classroom innovations and practices with measurable student outcomes.