Whole-child development focuses on supporting not only academic but also social emotional skills. This cross-sectional study’s aim was to examine the associations between the child-rated self-concept and well-being, teacher-rated prosocial school behaviors, and academic skills (as measured by child performance tasks) and to examine if there were group differences by gender for these constructs. The sample was 143 s grade students (M age = 8 years old). The results indicate that self-concept correlated highly with well-being and moderately with prosocial behaviors, while academic skills correlated moderately with prosocial behaviors. The results also show that the boys had lower average prosocial behavior (teacher-rated) and self-concept (child-rated) ratings relative to the girls. The findings indicate that prosocial behavior, well-being, and self-concept can be measured in psychometrically sound and practically meaningful ways in Swedish elementary schools. Because many of the socioemotional and behavioral constructs were correlated with academic skills, these constructs could be important targets for early academic support interventions inspired by a whole-child approach.

The well-being of children has received increasing attention in recent years. Nevertheless, we lack adequate brief self-report tools that enable us to consider young children’s well-being in policy evaluations and educational research. This study describes the adaptation and first validation of the Swedish version of How I Feel About My School (HIFAMS), a subjective well-being questionnaire suitable for children aged 4 to 12 years, which was originally developed in the United Kingdom (UK). Descriptive statistics with analysis of psychometric properties and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) are based on the perceived well-being of 228 children in preschool and school aged 5 to 8 years old. The CFA endorsed a good fit to a one-factor model, and the scale showed moderate internal consistency (r_α = 0.63). The results are largely in line with the findings of the original HIFAMS. We conclude that the Swedish version can be applied in early preschool/school settings and could provide first-hand information about children’s well-being from the first years of education until elementary school grades. Practitioners in early education settings might benefit from HIFAMS assessments when seeking to understand children’s current well-being to provide support to children with special educational needs or children at risk for mental health issues. Researchers could use the HIFAMS to standardize child well-being evaluations in policy evaluations and interventional studies.

This study examined the psychometric properties of a Swedish language adaption of the teacher-rated Elementary Social Behavior Assessment (ESBA), which provides an index of students’ prosocial school behaviors. Participants were eight teachers (two teachers per school in four schools) who rated their students (N = 143 children, M age = 8 years old). The ESBA factor structure was tested with Confirmatory Factor Analysis in a series of models. The two- and three-factor models showed better fit. ESBA showed high internal consistency at the observed level. ESBA’s psychometric properties show initial promise as a tool to help Swedish teachers to support students’ prosocial skills development.

Relationerna och det som händer socioemotionellt i klassrummet kan stödja eller hindra elevernas utveckling och lärande. Ett positivt och stödjande klassrumsklimat gynnar alla elever, men kan vara av särskilt värde för elever i behov av stöd. En intervention med inspiration från teorier om motivation och socioemotionell utveckling och lärande har testats. Möjligheten att förbättra klassrumsklimat och elevers resultat undersöktes genom observationer och återkoppling till lärarna om styrkor och utvecklingsområden. Denna modell skulle kunna användas av specialpedagoger för att stödja lärare att genomföra förbättringar av klassrumsklimatet och främja elevernas resultat. Kapitlet beskriver interventionen och lärarnas uppfattningar av att delta. Samtidigt som instrumenten och interventionen presenteras med positiva resultat, diskuteras även deras begränsningar och studiens potentiella bidrag till det specialpedagogiska fältet.

The classroom social–emotional climate is critical to students’ wellbeing and learning ability. In practice and research, an assessment instrument with strong validity is invaluable, providing crucial information about the classroom’s social–emotional and learning climate. This allows for a more accurate appreciation of the quality of the learning environment. A valid instrument is helpful and essential in improving the classroom climate in practice and demonstrating intervention outcomes in research. The primary aim was to evaluate the concurrent validity of the Educational Climate Assessment Tool (EduCAT)—a newly developed classroom observation instrument based on a solid theoretical framework and previous empirical research. The concurrent validity testing involved examining pairwise and multivariate canonical correlations between scores from the EduCAT scales (stimulation, improvement, structure, relationship, and influence) and scores from the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS®) administered concurrently in 30 kindergarten to third grade (K-3) classrooms in four schools in Sweden. The pairwise correlation results show that the scores of the two observation instruments have strong and moderate positive correlations, as hypothesized. The canonical correlation identifies which scales in EduCAT correlate more strongly to scales in CLASS®. The results indicate that the observations measured with EduCAT tap similar aspects of classroom climate quality to those measured with CLASS®, thereby confirming the new protocol’s concurrent validity and instilling confidence in its use.