Here are some of the best questions for a preschool teacher survey about social emotional development, plus tips for quickly creating them. We use Specific to build high-quality surveys in seconds—no hassle, just better insights.
Best open-ended questions for teachers about social emotional development
Open-ended questions let teachers share honest thoughts, unique stories, and detailed feedback—their own words spark real insights. They’re perfect if you want to understand context, surface unmet needs, or pick up on subtle classroom challenges that structured questions can miss.
How do you support children’s friendships and problem-solving in your classroom?
Can you describe a time when you helped a child work through a conflict with a peer?
What strategies have you found most successful for encouraging empathy among your students?
How do you help children identify and express their emotions?
What challenges do you face when teaching social emotional skills?
How do you involve families in supporting social emotional development at home?
Can you share any activities or routines you use to promote cooperation in your classroom?
What signs of social or emotional struggle do you look for in preschoolers?
How do you adapt your approach for children who need extra social emotional support?
What professional resources or training would help you improve your SEL (Social Emotional Learning) teaching?
This kind of open feedback is especially valuable considering children with strong social-emotional skills at age five are more likely to graduate high school and hold stable jobs as adults [2]. The right questions can help pinpoint needs and identify what works in the classroom.
Best single-select multiple-choice questions for teacher SEL surveys
Single-select multiple-choice questions are your go-to when you need clear, quantitative data or want to gently guide teachers into the conversation. They’re quick for teachers to answer and help you spot trends at a glance—then, use open or follow-up questions for deeper understanding.
Question: How confident do you feel teaching social emotional skills in your classroom?
Very confident
Somewhat confident
Not very confident
Not confident at all
Question: Which area of social emotional development do your students need the most support?
Self-awareness
Managing emotions
Making friends
Resolving conflicts
Other
Question: How often do you include SEL activities in your weekly lesson plans?
Daily
Several times a week
Once a week
Rarely
When to followup with "why?" Whenever someone chooses an answer—especially a less-positive one—asking "Why?" or "Can you tell me more?" uncovers the story behind the response. For example, if a teacher selects “Not very confident” on the first question, a follow-up like “What would help you feel more confident teaching SEL skills?” opens up actionable ideas.
When and why to add the "Other" choice? It's essential for questions where standard options might not cover every situation in real classrooms. Use "Other" when you want to let teachers add something you didn’t think of—these responses often reveal trends or needs you weren’t looking for, with follow-ups surfacing new insights.
Should you use NPS in teacher SEL surveys?
NPS (Net Promoter Score) asks: “How likely are you to recommend this program/method/resource to another preschool teacher?” with a 0–10 scale. It’s a staple in customer feedback, but it works for educators too—especially when you want a single, trackable score to measure satisfaction or impact over time. For SEL, asking teachers if they’d recommend your social emotional program or training shows you at a glance if you’re delivering real value. If you want to try, use Specific’s NPS preset for preschool teachers to get started fast.
The power of follow-up questions
Follow-up questions are where the magic happens. They let you clarify, dig deeper, and gather nuance—something classic surveys just can’t do. With automated conversation logic, like Specific’s AI follow-up feature, you get richer stories and more actionable results every time. For example, if a teacher says they “struggle with conflict resolution,” the AI can immediately ask: “Can you share a recent situation?”—making the feedback instantly more useful.
Teacher: I struggle with helping shy kids open up.
AI follow-up: What strategies have you tried so far, and what seems to help most?
Teacher: I wish parents could reinforce these skills at home.
AI follow-up: How do you currently involve families, and what support do you need?
How many followups to ask? In practice, two or three smart follow-ups are usually plenty—enough to get context without making it tiring. With tools like Specific, you can set this up automatically, and allow teachers to skip if they’ve said all they wanted. This strikes a great balance between depth and respect for time.
This makes it a conversational survey, which means the teacher feels heard and the feedback is more authentic—almost like an expert-led interview, but scalable.
AI analysis, survey data, summarizing responses: Even though the answers are richer and less structured, it’s simple to explore them—see this guide to analyzing survey responses with AI. You don’t have to read hundreds of sentences; AI summarizes and surfaces the patterns for you.
Automated follow-up questions are a fresh (and powerful) way to get deeper insights—if you want to feel the difference, generate a conversational survey and see for yourself how much more you can learn.
Prompting GPT: how to get great SEL survey questions for teachers
When I need a creative boost, I use AI tools like ChatGPT to help brainstorm. The key is to give clear, specific prompts tailored to your context. For a quick start, try:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for Preschool Teacher survey about social emotional development.
You almost always get better results if you provide more detail. Tell AI about your setting, goals, or the kind of language you want. For example:
We are preparing a survey for experienced preschool teachers. Our goal is to understand how teachers promote social emotional learning, with a focus on teamwork and resilience. Suggest 10 open-ended questions that are practical and easy to understand.
Once you have a draft list, ask AI to help organize ideas:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Then, pick categories that matter most to your school or district, and go deeper:
Generate 10 questions for categories "Building Friendships" and "Managing Emotions".
What is a conversational survey?
A conversational survey blends the flow of an interview with the structure of a survey—questions are asked one at a time, with automated follow-ups that feel like chatting with a real person. The result: respondents give more honest and thoughtful feedback because it feels less like an exam, more like a friendly exchange.
With traditional, manual surveys, you spend time drafting, formatting, testing, and often struggle to cover all scenarios up front. With an AI survey generator, you save time, get expert-level question ideas, and have the option to edit, localize, or refine with just a chat prompt. AI-powered surveys can dynamically respond to answers, making follow-up seamless and personal.
Manual Surveys | AI-Generated Surveys |
|---|---|
Static questions, no instant follow-up | Dynamic, context-aware follow-ups |
Time-consuming to draft and update | Edit questions on the fly using AI in the survey editor |
Difficult to analyze open-ended replies | Instant summaries and insight discovery with AI survey response analysis |
Generic feel, low engagement | Feels friendly, conversational, and engages teachers |
Why use AI for preschool teacher surveys? AI survey tools are a game-changer for preschool feedback because they adapt instantly, ask better follow-up questions, and analyze responses in context. This matters for SEL especially—teachers can share sensitive or complex classroom stories more comfortably in a chat-like survey. Learn how to create a survey in a few minutes and see for yourself.
Specific is designed for this challenge: our surveys offer best-in-class conversational experience, making it smooth and easy for both survey creators and busy teachers to share and collect meaningful feedback.
See this social emotional development survey example now
Don’t wait for deeper insights—see how a conversational survey instantly uncovers what really works in social emotional learning. Build your survey now and let Specific’s AI do the heavy lifting for you and your team.