The HSA at ARTS

Oct 28

Learn more about the Clover Method at the Pear Institute’s website.

The Holistic Student Assessment, or HSA, is a self-assessment tool designed by the PEAR Institute (Partnerships in Education and Resilience) at Harvard University to understand youth socio-emotional development. The four domains that PEAR assesses are: active engagement, assertiveness, belonging, and reflection.

Through this 61-item survey youth have a chance to express their interests and opinions about their social and academic well-being. These aggregate responses provide program staff and teaching artists with a general understanding of youth’s social-emotional development and 21st century skills such as creativity, communication, problem-solving, teamwork and relationship-building.

This Fall, we rolled out the HSA for youth ages 9-18 enrolled in the Community ARTS program. More than 50 youth took the pre-assessment phase this September; in December, the same group will do a post-assessment that will let us identify differences and similarities in their responses over the course of the program.

The aggregate results of these pre- and post- assessments will inform how ARTS programs can shape youths' social-emotional development. Interpreting these data trends will allow the Programs team at ARTS to better understand some of the needs, and even more importantly, strengths and resiliencies of the youth who participate in the Community ARTS program.

We are excited to see how these results can transform the future of our afterschool program. In essence, one of ARTS priorities is to build a curricular framework that focuses on the strengths of its program participants and addresses the clover model resiliencies —active engagement, assertiveness, belonging, and self-reflection— as integral elements in creative youth development. By understanding the strengths of the youth in our programs, we can promote relationship-building with peers and adults while they foster a healthy understanding of themselves and the world around them.

If you are interested in learning more about the research behind the Clover Model and the HSA check out the following studies: