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SEL Program Quality Assessment (SEL PQA)

The Social and Emotional Learning Program Quality Assessment (SEL PQA) is an observational rubric developed by the Forum for Youth Investment's David P. Weikart Center for Youth Program Quality. It measures staff practices that support social and emotional learning in youth programs, including camps, afterschool programs, and summer programs.

The SEL PQA is used by the American Camp Association and other organizations to evaluate program quality. Each item is scored on a 1-3-5 scale, where 1 represents the absence of a practice, 3 represents informal or partial presence, and 5 represents intentional, high-quality delivery.

This page maps the SEL PQA's four domains and ten scales to specific practices built into the Navigation Games curriculum. Camp directors and program evaluators can use this as a guide when preparing for quality assessments or when communicating the SEL value of orienteering programming.

I. Safe Environment​

Creating Safe Spaces​

Staff provide a safe and welcoming environment.

Items in this scale assess emotional climate, respectful communication, safe sharing, proactive group management, consistent guidelines, and active inclusion.

How the curriculum addresses this:

  • Every lesson begins with a safety briefing and boundary review. Students know the physical limits of the space and the gathering signal before any activity starts
  • The gathering signal is a positive group management tool: a structured, proactive way to bring everyone together without yelling or reprimands
  • Lessons use pair work and partner roles (Navigator and Checker) that give every student a defined job, reducing exclusion
  • Reflection questions are embedded in delivery, creating structured opportunities for students to share without pressure ("Was it easier the second time? Why?")
  • Camp lessons include an explicit "stop and wait" safety rule: if you are unsure where you are, stay put and a leader will find you. This normalizes uncertainty rather than punishing it

Activities: Boundary Run, Gathering, all paired activities, Find Your Way Home (safety briefing)

II. Supportive Environment​

Emotion Coaching​

Staff prompt young people to be aware of and constructively handle their emotions.

Items assess whether staff acknowledge emotions, ask youth to name their feelings, discuss constructive handling of emotions, and explore causes of emotions.

How the curriculum addresses this:

  • Reflection questions throughout the curriculum ask students to name how they felt: "How did you feel when you couldn't find a checkpoint?" "Were you nervous navigating on your own?"
  • The curriculum treats getting lost as a normal, expected part of learning. Lesson scripts model a constructive response: stop, reorient your map, look for features you recognize. This is emotion coaching in practice
  • Progressive difficulty builds emotional resilience. Students start with short, simple tasks (Boundary Run) and work up to independent navigation. Each step is designed so frustration is manageable
  • Camp Intro Session 2 (Find Your Way Home) directly addresses the emotional experience of being in an unfamiliar place and finding your way back

Activities: All activities with reflection, Geometric-O progressions, Find Your Way Home

Scaffolding Learning​

Staff scaffold tasks for optimal learning.

Items assess breaking tasks into steps, modeling skills, encouraging skill attempts, and adjusting difficulty.

How the curriculum addresses this:

  • The entire curriculum is a scaffolded progression. Students move from Boundary Run (no map, no navigation) to Gathering (spatial awareness) to Animal-O (clue sheets) to Geometric-O (simple maps) to Symbol-O (real orienteering maps) to Score-O (independent navigation)
  • Activity pages include step-by-step delivery instructions with numbered steps. Teachers model each skill before students try it
  • Compact delivery sections let experienced teachers adjust pacing, while full delivery scripts support new instructors
  • Geometric-O is explicitly designed for adjustable difficulty: triangle, square, pentagon, hexagon courses increase challenge. The lesson plans instruct teachers to monitor and advance students who are ready
  • Multiple difficulty levels appear throughout: Score-O with more or fewer checkpoints, Poison-O as a harder variant, courses at White/Yellow/Orange levels in camp

Activities: Geometric-O (progressive courses), Animal-O (repeat for speed, then from memory), all lesson progressions

Fostering Growth Mindset​

Staff support young people in developing achievement-effort beliefs.

Items assess guiding self-improvement, using specific non-evaluative feedback, and attributing success to effort and strategy.

How the curriculum addresses this:

  • Activities are designed for repeated attempts with visible improvement. Animal-O students run the same course multiple times and see their time drop. This directly connects effort to results
  • Reflection questions focus on strategy, not ability: "What did you do differently the second time?" "How did you figure out which way to go?" "What would you change next time?"
  • The curriculum avoids ranking students. Score-O is not about who gets the most points but about each student navigating independently. Personal improvement is the measure
  • Errors are treated as information. In Poison-O, wrong answers lead to a discussion: "How could you tell the difference between the safe checkpoint and the poison one?" This frames mistakes as learning opportunities

Activities: Animal-O (repeat for improvement), Poison-O (learning from errors), all activities with self-checking

III. Interactive Environment​

Fostering Teamwork​

Staff provide opportunities to collaborate and work cooperatively with others.

Items assess small-group collaboration, shared goals, and group-process skills.

How the curriculum addresses this:

  • Partner work with Navigator and Checker roles requires active collaboration. The Navigator decides where to go; the Checker confirms the answer. Neither can succeed alone
  • Relay formats (Symbol Relay, Star Relay, Checkpoint Copy Relay) require teams to coordinate, communicate, and depend on each other's contributions
  • Team Score-O formats create shared goals: the team's score depends on everyone's navigation
  • Map Discussion and group reflection provide structured opportunities for all students to contribute ideas

Activities: Symbol Relay, Star Relay, Checkpoint Copy Relay, all paired activities, team Score-O

Promoting Responsibility and Leadership​

Staff provide young people with opportunities to grow in responsibility and leadership.

Items assess assigned responsibilities, independent task completion, mentoring, leading a group, and sharing ideas.

How the curriculum addresses this:

  • The Navigator role gives every student a turn leading. The pair depends on the Navigator's decisions
  • Lesson plans suggest having students take turns leading during Map Walk: a student leads the group along the route while others follow on their maps
  • Students who finish early can help set up courses, check other students' work, or design their own courses for classmates (Score-O extensions)
  • In camp settings, older campers who completed the Skill Development curriculum can assist with Intro sessions
  • Reflection and wrap-up discussions provide structured sharing: students describe their strategies and findings to the group

Activities: Map Walk (student-led sections), all Navigator/Checker pair work, Score-O extensions (design your own course)

Cultivating Empathy​

Staff support young people in practicing empathy skills.

Items assess listening activities, discussing others' emotions, providing opportunities for kindness, and understanding differences.

How the curriculum addresses this:

  • The Checker role is fundamentally about attending to another person's experience. The Checker watches the Navigator, confirms answers, and provides feedback without taking over
  • Reflection questions ask students to consider others' experiences: "How did you work together?" "Could you have worked better as a team? How?"
  • Pair work naturally creates empathy moments. A stronger navigator paired with a less experienced one must learn patience and coaching skills rather than doing it for them
  • Group discussions after activities let students hear different strategies and experiences, building understanding of different approaches to the same problem

Activities: All Checker/Navigator pair work, team relays, group reflection discussions

IV. Engaging Environment​

Furthering Learning​

Staff encourage young people to deepen their learning.

Items assess connecting to prior knowledge, linking examples to principles, deepening knowledge, logical reasoning, and guided discovery.

How the curriculum addresses this:

  • Lessons explicitly connect each session to the previous one. Lesson 4 references what students learned about symbols in Lesson 3. Camp Session 4 begins with a Symbol Relay warm-up to review Session 1 content
  • Reflection questions push for reasoning: "Why was it easier the second time?" "How did you know which direction to go?" "How is Poison-O different from Score-O?"
  • The progression from clue sheets to pattern maps to orienteering maps links concrete experiences to abstract principles: students discover that the pattern map is a simplified version of the same spatial relationships they navigated with clue sheets
  • Map Discussion asks students to look at a real orienteering map and figure out what symbols represent by connecting them to features they can see. This is guided discovery, not lecture

Activities: Map Discussion, Map Walk, Geometric-O (connecting pattern maps to orienteering maps), all lesson progressions

Supporting Youth Interests​

Staff shape opportunities for young people to make choices based on their interests.

Items assess providing choices, multiple opportunities for choice, and encouraging creativity.

How the curriculum addresses this:

  • Score-O is entirely about choice. Students choose which checkpoints to visit, in what order, and how many to attempt. No two students take the same route
  • Progressive activities let students choose their difficulty level. In Geometric-O, students can repeat easier courses or advance to harder ones
  • The curriculum encourages students to design their own courses as an extension, creating an open-ended creative challenge
  • Camp lessons let pairs choose starting locations and routes in Find Your Way Home

Activities: Score-O (route choice), Geometric-O (self-paced progression), course design extensions

Supporting Plans and Goals​

Staff provide opportunities to plan, set goals, and solve problems.

Items assess goal-setting, recording plans, monitoring progress, and trying multiple approaches to solve problems.

How the curriculum addresses this:

  • Route planning is central to orienteering. Before leaving the start, students study the map and decide which way to go. In Score-O, they must plan which checkpoints to visit within a time limit
  • Lesson plans include "say the order of features out loud before starting" as a planning step, making the plan visible and reviewable
  • Repeat attempts build goal-setting naturally. Students who run a course a second time are trying to improve. Students who advance from triangle to square to pentagon courses are setting and meeting progressive goals
  • When navigation fails, students must try a different approach: stop, reorient the map, retrace steps, look for a recognizable feature. The curriculum builds problem-solving by making errors recoverable, not fatal

Activities: Score-O (route planning), Animal-O (improving times), Geometric-O (progressive goals), all re-attempt activities

Summary​

SEL PQA DomainScalesStrongest Curriculum Connections
I. Safe EnvironmentCreating Safe SpacesBoundary Run, Gathering signal, safety briefings, stop-and-wait rule
II. Supportive EnvironmentEmotion Coaching, Scaffolding Learning, Growth MindsetProgressive difficulty, reflection questions, repeat-for-improvement design, strategy-focused feedback
III. Interactive EnvironmentTeamwork, Responsibility & Leadership, EmpathyNavigator/Checker roles, relay formats, student-led Map Walk, peer coaching
IV. Engaging EnvironmentFurthering Learning, Youth Interests, Plans & GoalsMap Discussion, Score-O choice, route planning, course design extensions

Source​

Social and Emotional Learning Program Quality Assessment (SEL PQA), Forum for Youth Investment, David P. Weikart Center for Youth Program Quality, 2021. PDF stored in background/sel-pqa.pdf.

See Also​