Contents
Introduction and executive summary
Multiple traits compose a broad definition of what it means to be an educated person. Indisputably, being an educated person is associated with having a certain command of a curriculum, and knowledge of theories and facts from various disciplines. But the term educated also suggests a more far-reaching concept associated with individuals’ full development. Such development implies, for example, that individuals are equipped with traits and skills—such as critical thinking skills, problem solving skills, social skills, persistence, creativity, and self-control—that allow them to contribute meaningfully to society and to succeed in their public lives, workplaces, homes, and other societal contexts. These traits are often called, generically, noncognitive skills.1
Despite noncognitive skills’ central roles in our education and, more broadly, our lives, education analysis and policy have tended to overlook their importance. Thus, there are currently few strategies to nurture them within the school context or through education policies. However, after a relatively prolonged lack of consideration, noncognitive skills are again beginning to be acknowledged in discussions about education, leading to the need for thoughtful and concerted attention from researchers, policymakers, and practitioners.
This paper contends that noncognitive skills should be an explicit pillar of education policy. It contributes to the growing interest in these skills by reviewing what we know about noncognitive skills, including what they are, why they matter, and how they enter into the education process. We then extend the discussion by providing a tentative list of skills that are both important for and can be nurtured by schools. Contrasting what we know about noncognitive skills with how policy currently treats them, we contend that noncognitive skills deserve more attention in the education policy arena. Toward this end, we propose some guidelines for how to design education policies that better nurture them, and describe the kinds of research needed to inform policy and practice.
This paper is composed of two main sections. The first defines noncognitive skills and explores the evidence-based findings on their role in education and adulthood outcomes, and on how they are nurtured. The second section examines how education policy could help schools better nurture noncognitive skills. It includes some suggestions for researchers on how their work can provide new evidence geared toward policymakers, and a discussion of the goals of public education, education reform, and accountability.
The following are the main themes that emerge from our examination of the literature on noncognitive skills:
Noncognitive skills have been broadly defined as representing the “patterns of thought, feelings and behavior” (Borghans et al. 2008) of individuals that may continue to develop throughout their lives (Bloom 1964).
To advance research and policy pertaining to noncognitive skills, we focus on particular noncognitive skills that schools should nurture and policies should promote. These include critical thinking skills, problem solving skills, emotional health, social skills, work ethic, and community responsibility. Also important are factors affecting personal relationships between students and teachers (closeness, affection, and open communication), self-control, self-regulation, persistence, academic confidence, teamwork, organizational skills, creativity, and communication skills.
Noncognitive skills matter for their own sake. They also matter indirectly (i.e., they correlate with other individual and societal outcomes). In particular, noncognitive skills support cognitive development; noncognitive and cognitive skills are interdependent and cannot be isolated from one another. Additionally, employers stress the value of noncognitive skills in the workplace, and evidence suggests that noncognitive skills are associated with higher productivity and earnings.
Noncognitive skills are developed before and throughout children’s school years. The development of these skills is dependent on family and societal characteristics and on school and teacher factors (particularly the instruction and social interactions that take place in school).
Multiple studies identifying the interdependence between cognitive and noncognitive skills indicate that we may fail to boost cognitive skills unless we pay closer attention to noncognitive skills. In other words, focusing on noncognitive skills may actually further improve reading, writing, and mathematics performance.
Since noncognitive skills matter greatly and can be nurtured in schools, developing them should be an explicit goal of public education. This objective contrasts with the current overemphasis on cognitive aspects, which has not only displaced schools’ support of noncognitive development, but is also counterproductive in helping them improve cognitive skills. Most critically, it stands in the way of schools’ nurturing of children’s full development. The following are the main policy recommendations that emerge from these insights:
Accountability practices and policies must be broadened in a way that incentivizes schools’ and teachers’ contribution to the development of noncognitive skills. Making the development of the whole child central to the mission of education policy would help improve accountability through spurring changes to curriculum, teacher preparation and support, other aspects of schools’ functioning, and evaluation systems.
Incentives promoted by such an enhanced accountability system would be aligned with widening the curriculum, cultivating the proper climate within the school (including promoting teachers’ investment in relationships with students), and ensuring teachers have time to employ strategies conducive to the development of noncognitive (as well as cognitive) skills.
Many of the existing disciplinary measures used to combat student misbehavior are at odds with the goal of nurturing noncognitive skills. Harsh measures—including in-school and out-of-school suspensions and expulsions, referrals to law enforcement, and even arrests (often called, collectively, zero-tolerance policies)—are increasingly used to punish low-level infractions.
Disciplinary measures need to be refocused away from sanctioning wrongdoing and toward supporting and promoting better noncognitive behavior, and toward preventing misbehavior. These policies could include restorative practices such as peer mediation, group responsibility, and counseling, among others.
The following precepts can guide education policymakers in their efforts to make noncognitive skills core components of K–12 policies:
Learn from and adapt policies and practices in the areas of early childhood education, afterschool and summer enrichment, and special education.
Look to districts that are piloting noncognitive skills–related strategies (such as Boston and Austin) as potential models, and emulate state- and federal-level policies that support such strategies (such as the New York State Board of Regents Social and Emotional Developmental Guidelines).
Ensure that policy is informed by those closest to the education system—particularly teachers, parents, and students—and that other key actors (such as foundations) play an appropriately balanced part.
Researchers can contribute to better education policy in important ways.
Further exploration of noncognitive skills can boost knowledge of how education processes and interventions work—particularly how incentives, behavior, and interactions among these and other factors determine children’s learning.
Improved definitions of noncognitive skills, as well as more reliable and valid metrics systems and instruments to measure noncognitive skills, are key to improving both practice and policy.
In the current context of debates about how to shape education reforms, a renewed focus on noncognitive skills could provide an opportune chance to enact a more effective education strategy overall.
Why do noncognitive skills merit core consideration in the education policy agenda?
Resurgent interest in noncognitive skills is driving the need to fully integrate them into our frameworks of both analysis and action in education policy. This paper asserts that policy should explicitly aim to nurture these skills, and the foundations for this assertion are threefold.
First, there has always been implicit recognition that noncognitive skills play an important part in education. Noncognitive skills represent valuable assets with respect to both traditional school outcomes and the broader development of individuals. Indeed, various strands of scholarship come together to point to noncognitive skills’ centrality. Historically, some scholars—mainly philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists—have noted that education has multiple dimensions, some more specifically cognitive, and others associated with personal or behavioral dimensions.2 Many educators, policymakers, and societal leaders have argued that the mission of public education includes promoting not only cognitive skills, but also various individual and democratic skills (to paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr., “Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education”). And most teachers and parents inherently recognize both the intrinsic importance of certain behavioral skills and their relevance for building cognitive skills.3
Second, to the extent that noncognitive skills can be developed in schools (during the period in which children’s personalities are shaped), policymakers must understand the evidence regarding them. This includes identifying which skills are relevant for educational purposes. It also means creating definitions for the major skills that are to be developed (i.e., social skills, such as the ability to get along with others from varied backgrounds),4 and assessing their role in the education process. Finally, as is true of cognitive skills, it requires recognition that while all students should develop a baseline level of noncognitive skills that enables them to thrive in school and life, beyond that, variation across students is natural and desirable.
These two findings lead to a third: the need for a more comprehensive education policy agenda. Such a broadened approach will likely be at odds with many aspects of current policies, which have largely neglected noncognitive skills. In fact, some have led schools to narrow their curriculum to focus on a small set of cognitive skills and to employ test preparation as a major instructional strategy. In his recent book, Paul Tough (2012) echoes the concerns of others that we have been wrongly focused on a “cognitive hypothesis.”5 This failure to pay attention to noncognitive skills has proven to be quite problematic, as it depletes schools’ incentives and capacities to contribute to the socialization and personal development of their students. Policy must thus be broadened to solve the apparent contradiction between how the system is defined and the incentives are set up, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the imperative to help children thrive and receive the rounded education they deserve.
Consequently, this paper adopts the view that the education system should ensure all children have the opportunity to fulfill their potential by exploring these traits in their developmental years in school. In other words, as noncognitive skills are educational outcomes whose intrinsic value makes them important per se, and whose production or accumulation in children’s school years has demonstrated importance, we contend that education policymakers must embrace noncognitive skills, and design policies that protect these skills and foster their development.6
What does research demonstrate regarding noncognitive skills?
In this section we define noncognitive skills and explore the evidence-based findings on their role in education and adulthood outcomes. We then explore how these skills can be intentionally nurtured and developed. The review of literature is by no means exhaustive. Rather, it aims to highlight some of the most relevant evidence about noncognitive skills, and we only briefly review some specific aspects, though we hope to build on these initial discussions in future studies on this subject.
In search of a definition and a list of skills
We begin by explaining the abstract concept of noncognitive skills and then present a list of specific noncognitive skills that are relevant to the education process.
What are noncognitive skills?
Defining noncognitive skills is as challenging an endeavor as it is to identify, classify, measure, and quantify them.7 Indeed, to illustrate the unique difficulty of defining these skills, we note the ongoing debate about how researchers and writers should refer to these skills (the current list includes such terms as behavioral skills, soft skills, personality traits, noncognitive abilities, character, socio-emotional skills, and noncognitive skills), as well as the sometimes controversial delimitations between cognitive and noncognitive skills, or between personal traits and learnable noncognitive skills.
To produce the definition used in this paper, we combine several theoretical definitions that, together, capture the essence of noncognitive skills in education. We define noncognitive skills as representing the “patterns of thought, feelings and behavior” (Borghans et al. 2008) of individuals that may continue to develop throughout their lives (Bloom 1964), and that play some role in the education process. Broadly, these skills encompass those traits that are not directly represented by cognitive skills or by formal conceptual understanding, but instead by socio-emotional or behavioral characteristics that are not fixed traits of the personality, and that are linked to the educational process, either by being nurtured in the school years or by contributing to the development of cognitive skills in those years (or both).
Which noncognitive skills are relevant to the education process?
We recognize that the generic definition developed here may be of little use for the policymaking and practical uses we advance. A more concrete or tangible approach to getting at noncognitive skills requires listing them. To our knowledge, however, such a list does not yet exist, and indeed, this can represent one major challenge to moving this field forward. The lack of such a classification delays the development of metrics to measure and assess skills, and the design of strategies to nurture them. Additionally, crafting such a list likely engenders controversy, in terms of which skills belong on the list, and how we can know this in the absence of proper metrics.
Our attempt to outline a concrete set of skills builds on both researchers’ contributions (evidence- and/or theory-based) and on our understanding of the goals of public education. We subscribe to the idea that education is foundational both to sustaining a healthy democracy and to ensuring the ability of individuals to fulfill their natural personal and productive potentials, and that (public) schools are critical to fulfilling those goals. Given this understanding, we suggest that the following noncognitive traits and skills should be a primary focus of education policy.
The list includes critical thinking skills, problem solving skills, emotional health, social skills, work ethic, and community responsibility, which are identified by Rothstein, Jacobsen, and Wilder (2008) as aligned with goals of public education similar to those we set forth above. Pianta and colleagues’ contribution adds to the list factors affecting personal relationships between students and teachers (closeness, affection, and open communication), self-control, and self-regulation. We suggest, as well, the importance of persistence, academic confidence, teamwork, organizational skills, creativity, and communication skills.8 We title this list the education policy list of noncognitive skills.
It is important to note that this list is likely to grow (or shrink) as more evidence emerges, and that specific definitions of each skill may vary by age and other factors. We also note that references below either generically to noncognitive skills or to specific noncognitive skills are driven by the evidence itself. In some cases, a study has reviewed noncognitive skills generally, while other studies explore a specific skill or a set of them. Given the relative newness of the field (in contrast to studies of cognitive skills), it is still common practice to refer to the broad type or category of skill, and many key contributions in this area (including most of James Heckman’s and his coauthors’ seminal works) use the term “noncognitive skills,” rather than anything more specific.
Why do noncognitive skills matter?
Now that we’ve established which noncognitive skills matter, we discuss why they matter. As explained below, noncognitive skills matter for their own sake, and they matter indirectly (i.e., they correlate with other individual and societal outcomes, such as academic performance, labor productivity, and earnings).
Noncognitive skills matter for their own sake
Based on the above definition and list of noncognitive skills, it is clear that they are valuable in their own right, and that they matter in a direct fashion. The importance of emotional, social, and democratic citizenship skills—or, to cite a few specific skills within those categories, self-confidence, respect for others, ability to build consensus, and willingness to tolerate alternative viewpoints—should be beyond debate. As noted above, nurturing these skills is indeed an implicit—sometimes explicit—goal of public education (Rothstein, Jacobsen, and Wilder 2008), and from the perspective of schools, such traits as persistence, communication skills, creativity, and teamwork, among many others, should be considered important in themselves. As such, promoting these traits should be among schools’ core mission; based on these definitions alone, these skills matter greatly.9
Noncognitive skills matter indirectly
Another angle through which to understand the importance of noncognitive skills is to explore their correlation with other individual and societal outcomes, from educational attainment and adult earnings to civic participation, among others (Almlund et al. 2011). As summarized by Levin (2012b), “[…] these dimensions play a role in forming healthy character and contribute to productive relations in work-places, communities, families, and politics.” It is important to note, though, that in contrast to the extensive evidence documenting the relationship between educational attainment (and cognitive skills) and these other outcomes, the empirical literature on the links between noncognitive skills and those outcomes is relatively scarce. It is even scarcer when we consider only empirical evidence that results from experimental (and, to a lesser extent, quasi-experimental) analyses. Happily, however, research in this area is increasing, and we acknowledge, in particular, the essential contributions of James Heckman and his coauthors. Moreover, although it is still limited, this body of evidence consistently indicates positive relationships between noncognitive skills and other dimensions or skills, as illustrated by the following examples.
The association between noncognitive skills and academic performance
Scholars have long noted the positive association between noncognitive skills and educational attainment. A century ago, Binet and Simon (1916, 254) noted that performance in school “admits other things than intelligence; to succeed in his studies, one must have qualities which depend on attention, will and character.” Recently, a more detailed explanation of how noncognitive skills relate to academic performance was provided by Olson (2012). Social skills—children’s ability to get along and interact with peers—and the absence of aggressive or disruptive behavior predict and facilitate learning (Olson 2012, 20). Heckman’s (2008) core point in support of early investments in education—“skills beget skills”—makes a similar argument.
Several meta-analyses and compendiums of reviewed literature also affirm the positive association between noncognitive skills and academic achievement. One recent literature review of the contribution of noncognitive skills to academic performance is provided by Farrington et al. (2012). This review assumes that academic performance, as measured by grades or test scores, reflects not only knowledge of academic contents but also other important student attributes or noncognitive factors, such as a “range of academic behaviors, attitudes, and strategies that are critical for success in school and in later life.” Farrington and colleagues’ list includes study skills, attendance, work habits, time management, help-seeking behaviors, metacognitive strategies, and social and academic problem-solving (some of which, as noted above, may be considered in part cognitive). In the authors’ conceptual framework, noncognitive skills operate in a three-level environment, determined by student background, school and classroom context, and socio-cultural context, which may, in turn, shape their specific impact on achievement.10
Durlak et al. (2011) conducted a meta-analysis of over 200 interventions aimed at increasing the social and emotional learning of children from kindergarten through high school (ages 5–18). This study is one of the most extensive reviews of such interventions, and it relies on empirical evidence that included control groups for the analyzed interventions. Their conclusions suggest that participants benefited from the interventions, and, specifically, that their social and behavioral skills improved.11 On average, participating students also exhibited higher academic achievement, with an associated gain in performance estimated to be equivalent to 11 percentile points, approximately constant across grades. Levin (2012a) translates this gain into a measure equivalent to one-third of a standard deviation, a significant increase from an education policy perspective. In a widely circulated newspaper column based on earlier versions of this meta-analysis, Shriver and Weissberg (2005) emphasized the extreme relevance of these findings in demonstrating that policy can effectively target both cognitive and noncognitive aspects concurrently, and can appropriately balance benchmarks established for the two domains. In sum, this significant meta-analysis shows how noncognitive skills support cognitive development, and demonstrates that these skills are interdependent and cannot be isolated from one another.
In addition to the evaluations included in Durlak et al.’s meta-analysis, other empirical studies show how specific noncognitive skills affect academic performance. It is important to note that some of these interventions also affect noncognitive performance, or affect cognitive performance through their influence on noncognitive domains, again reflecting the interdependence of these categories of skills and their development.12 Interesting findings derive from studies of how executive function skills—self-regulation and self-control—are important predictors of achievement. For instance, self-control and self-discipline are predictive of better behaviors in the classroom, which also correlate with improved report card grades and other measures of academic performance (Duckworth, Quinn, and Tsukayama 2012; Duckworth and Seligman 2005).13
A related area of research that is particularly promising examines how academic performance is affected by factors such as school climate or learning environment (these terms encompass human relationships and other conditions conducive to learning, such as safety, empowerment, collaboration, and an engaging environment). One especially useful reference in this area is the comprehensive examination by Bryk et al. (2010) of components that are critical to helping struggling schools become more successful. Their work for the Consortium on Chicago School Research, which compares successful and unsuccessful public elementary schools in Chicago, extensively documents how differences in performance across seemingly similar schools can be explained by factors such as lack of safety, level of violence, and whether the school has established a student-centered learning climate (in addition to such critical components as rigorous instruction, leadership, and community participation). Over the years, research on school climate has gained traction, and it is currently an important area of analysis for researchers and institutions seeking to explain what constitutes a good school.14 Most of the evidence in this area is correlational, but, again, strongly points to the importance of a whole-child development strategy; focusing on the whole child gives improvements in curriculum, instruction, and assessment a much greater chance of succeeding (Comer 2005). As an example, a recent study (Hanson and Voight 2014) using two years of data from students in a California middle school shows a positive correlation between performance in math and reading and various measures of school climate (safety and connectedness, caring relationships with adults, meaningful participation, and reduced substance use, bullying and discrimination, and delinquency). We would expect future research on how school climate variables affect noncognitive skills to further confirm the strength of these associations.
The association between noncognitive skills and labor productivity and earnings
While it is well-established that additional schooling leads to higher earnings and labor productivity (Card 1999), there is no exact estimate of the degree to which noncognitive skills are rewarded in the labor market. There are, though, several studies on the relevance of noncognitive skills as determinants of long-term labor market outcomes, as well as some attempts to estimate the economic returns to these skills.
One way to document this association is to look at surveys of employers to determine how they value these skills in the workplace. For example, a ranking of the desired skill set needed for new entrants’ workforce readiness (Casner-Lotto and Barrington 2006) provides some interesting information in this regard. For new entrants with a four-year college degree, results from a survey of over 400 employers in the United States indicate that the four most important skills are oral communication, teamwork/collaboration, professionalism/work ethic, and critical thinking/problem solving. More than 90 percent of employers surveyed declared these skills to be “very important.” In contrast, writing, mathematics, science, and history/geography were ranked 6th, 15th, 16th, and 19th, respectively, out of 20 skills.15 These rankings may not be surprising on their face: Few occupations rely heavily on basic academic knowledge developed in school settings. But the fact that employers stress the value of noncognitive skills in the workplace speaks to both those skills’ overall impact and to the need to readjust our perceptions of such constructs as college-and-career readiness.16
A body of empirical evidence provides a second way to assess the contribution of noncognitive skills to jobs and earnings. Heckman, Stixrud, and Urzua (2006) offer two paths through which noncognitive skills can raise wages: direct effects on productivity, and indirect effects through their impact on schooling and work experience. Using data from the NLSY-1979, the authors’ estimates indicated that the effects of cognitive and noncognitive skills on earnings were very similar (see estimated coefficients in Tables 4 and 5). Murnane et al. (2001), who estimate the impact of adolescent measures of self esteem on wages received 10 years later, find a positive association between the two. They suggest that self esteem could be associated with being particularly good at working productively in groups, and also with higher levels of perseverance.17
Other evidence is found in indirect estimates of the importance of noncognitive skills, and in explanations of these indirect connections. Gintis (1971) used the following approach to indirectly test noncognitive skills’ relevance to earnings. He suggested that omitting a variable representing noncognitive skills in a model designed to estimate the returns to education (a traditional Mincerian equation) would introduce some bias in the estimate of the returns to education. In other words, part of the estimated returns to education are, in fact, due to the effect of noncognitive skills on earnings. Heckman and Rubinstein (2001) use a similarly indirect method to attribute to noncognitive skills the difference in earnings between individuals with seemingly equal levels of educational attainment (GED holders and high school graduates). And Bowles, Gintis, and Osborne (2001) estimated that the returns to educational attainment—measured by years of schooling—diminished by about 20 percent when noncognitive skills were accounted for.
While acknowledging that noncognitive skills affect many other adult outcomes beyond earnings, we summarize these relationships with a quote from Heckman and Kautz (2012): “The […] message is that soft skills predict success in life, that they produce that success, and that programs that enhance soft skills have an important place in an effective portfolio of public policies.” Building on that statement, below we explore how these noncognitive skills that lead to success in life are generated during children’s school years.
What do we know about the origins of noncognitive skills and how they can be nurtured?
Factors hypothesized to influence the development of noncognitive skills include genetics, nurturing, practices during early childhood education, health, school environment, teaching practices, and specific teacher characteristics, among others. In this section, we explore some of the processes that create or enhance noncognitive skills. First, we focus on the importance of the child’s environment for the development of noncognitive skills. Second, we explore how other non-school factors can affect those skills. Finally, we explore how differences in school factors (teacher and school characteristics, and other education inputs) influence these skills.18
The importance of the environment
First, we review evidence regarding how an individual’s environment—including such individual, family, and contextual characteristics as social class, poverty, housing, student mobility, culture, etc.—affects his/her noncognitive skills.19 An important reference summarizing this is found in Shonkoff and Phillips (2000). The authors point out that “every aspect of early human development […] is affected by the environments and experiences that are encountered in a cumulative fashion, beginning in the prenatal period and extending throughout the early childhood years.” While the mechanisms underlying these connections are best explained by developmental psychologists and neuroscientists, whose frameworks and explanations are beyond the scope of this project, current research is working to uncover the connections between environment and development, including the underlying causal mechanisms in early development (Knudsen et al. 2006).20
Building on the work of Shonkoff and others, Grissmer and Eiseman (2008) point out that some of the racial gaps in noncognitive skills may be explained by differences in the “environmental mechanisms driving development from conception to kindergarten entrance.” From other correlational studies, we also know that students’ personality and incentives provided by their environment are important in explaining absenteeism and disruptive, inattentive, and tardy behaviors (Segal 2008). Another study that touches on an important category of noncognitive skills—executive function—explains the potential moderators and mediators between socioeconomic status and inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, and working memory, which include household composition and family environment (Sarsour et al. 2011).
Data demonstrating the magnitude of the differences in noncognitive scores when students enter kindergarten also help illustrate the role of the environment. Frequently, researchers use the child’s socioeconomic status (SES), or social class, to measure variation in the environment in which he or she lives. This is because SES acts as a mediating variable for the effects of other mechanisms that affect skills acquisition, such as parenting behaviors and engagement, access to higher quality early childhood care, parents’ work habits, and intellectual interests emphasized in the home.21 As Figure A illustrates, a relative disadvantage among children in the lowest socio-economic status quintile, versus the other students, is visible across all major domains. Also, the biggest gaps seem to be between the middle and the high-middle socioeconomic groups.
Interactive
Figure A
Interactive
Noncognitive skills gaps by socioeconomic status quintile, as compared with the bottom quintile
Category
Second quintile
Middle quintile
Fourth quintile
Top quintile
Self-control
0.071
0.158
0.282
0.307
Approaches to learning
0.131
0.227
0.429
0.505
Social interactions
0.162
0.183
0.176
0.184
Attentional focus
0.111
0.255
0.440
0.532
Teacher closeness
0.040
0.112
0.183
0.221
Follows class rules
0.066
0.133
0.306
0.370
Eagerness to learn
0.091
0.187
0.354
0.405
Pays attention well
0.103
0.184
0.358
0.437
Persists in completing tasks
0.116
0.177
0.345
0.422
Creative in work or play
0.083
0.066
0.113
0.140
Note: The reference category is the bottom socioeconomic quintile. Almost all the differences between the represented socioeconomic quintiles and the bottom quintile are statistically significant (see Garcia 2015, forthcoming). Dependent variables are standardized. Each regression uses the maximum number of observations available in each case. Coefficients are weighted and corrected for heteroskedasticity. Specifications include controls for gender, ethnicity, family composition and size, language at home different from English, disability, whether the student attended any type of prekindergarten center, and age in months. Information represents values at the start of kindergarten (fall 2010).
Source: Adapted from Inequalities at the Starting Gate (Garcia 2015, forthcoming), which analyzes data from the National Center for Education’s ECLS-K 2010–2011 data set
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The impact of environmental-school factors on noncognitive skills
Having established the general influence of socioeconomic and other environmental factors on noncognitive skills, we now discuss some examples of interventions affecting the school environment that have been found to either drive or inhibit children’s development of those skills. As noted above, the goal of this section is to document the importance of noncognitive skills in the educational context/environment broadly. (A detailed analysis of interventions found to effectively nurture one or more noncognitive skills would constitute its own lengthy paper.)
Research findings regarding the promise of interventions designed to improve behavior and school engagement suggest how different approaches and services (some of them outside the standard competencies of education policy) can influence them. For example, a community schools approach—which includes wraparound student, family, and teacher supports—has been found to be helpful in promoting students’ sense of school as a welcoming place, which is in turn associated with improved motivation and academic confidence (see, e.g., Castrechini and London 2012). A community school strategy in New York City led to improved academic performance and attendance, increased parental involvement, and created safer learning environments and better student–teacher relationships (Quinn 2003). School-based health clinics, one of the supports found to be a factor in positive community schools outcomes, have likewise been linked to improved student mental health, and to reduced tardiness and increased attendance, as well as to a trusting relationship with a caring adult in the school setting (Anyon et al. 2013).22 Finally, afterschool programs and others that address out-of-school time gaps in opportunity have been found to have positive impacts on student engagement, attitudes toward school, and other behavior-related noncognitive skills (see, for instance, Quinn 2003 for a review of the literature, and Durlak and Weissberg 2013 regarding improvements in positive social behaviors, reduction in problem behaviors, and improved school attendance from “afterschool programs that follow evidence-based practices to promote social and emotional development”).23 A few detailed, evidence-based examples are discussed below.24
Cook, Murphy, and Hunt (2000) found that the School Development Program, an initiative serving disadvantaged students in inner-city Chicago schools that seeks to improve their interpersonal relationships and social climate, had a positive impact on student beliefs, feelings, and behaviors that led to reduced disruptive behavior.25 Initiated in 1968 and designed by James Comer, the program seeks to improve children’s social and emotional (and academic) outcomes through the cooperation of parents, educators, and the community by offering problem-solving initiatives conducive to creating a healthy school culture and environment. The program entails the development of an improvement plan for each school that is then overseen by a team composed of administrators, teachers, parents, other school staff and professionals (such as counselors), and, in some cases, students, taking a whole-student development approach (Comer 2005). It has been adopted in more than 1,000 schools in over half of the states in the country (as well as internationally).26
Other studies have focused on school violence and disciplinary behaviors to diagnose how these affect students’ performance in both cognitive and noncognitive domains. Gottfredson (1987) describes an organizational development method implemented by researchers and school staff to reduce school disorder in two junior high schools in Baltimore. The program consisted of modifying the schools’ planning, rewards, and administration systems, and the school and classroom environment, which increased students’ sense of belonging in school and prosocial peer support. Another example of these complex interconnections is the evaluation of Fast Track, a comprehensive program for students in grades one through 10 that seeks to reduce conduct problems and promote academic, behavioral, and social improvement. Fast Track’s recent evaluation under the What Works Clearinghouse standards showed positive effects on emotional/internal and external behavior and had social benefits for children classified as having an emotional disturbance (as well as for those at risk of classification). The program also demonstrated benefits in reading achievement and literacy (U.S. Department of Education 2014).
Finally, in studying the development of noncognitive skills, it is of particular interest to understand how out-of-school and extracurricular activities help adolescents form their identity by developing skills and preferences, and building a relationship with others (Eccles and Barber 1999; Valentine et al. 2002; Youniss et al. 2002).27 Other studies examined the link between participation in extracurricular activities and adolescent functioning (Gilman, Meyers, and Perez 2004; Huebner and Mancini 2003; Zaff et al. 2003). Recently, Baker (2013) and Durlak and Weissberg (2013) highlighted that quality afterschool and summer learning programs have positive effects both on students’ learning and on their personal and social development.
The importance of school and teacher factors
Empirical research on the production of education—in which a combination of inputs is used to produce a given school outcome (Todd and Wolpin 2003)—has traditionally focused on studying how school and teacher factors (in addition to individual-level factors) correlate with cognitive performance,28 but not so much on how they correlate with noncognitive skills. If we accept the broad definition of education as encompassing both cognitive and noncognitive skills, however, this framework can also be used to examine the connections between teacher and school variables (e.g., teacher experience, educational attainment and certification, and class size) and noncognitive skills.
One example of this research is Dee and West’s (2011) study of the effects of class size in eighth grade on students’ engagement with school.29 Their findings indicate that smaller class sizes are associated with small improvements in the measured skills, with effects between 0.05 and 0.09 standard deviations. Using a quasi-experimental approach, Garcia (2013) finds that teachers’ experience is positively associated with performance in noncognitive skills.30 In particular, students’ noncognitive skills are expected to increase by 0.06 standard deviations for each standard deviation increase in teacher experience. Some indicators of the effects of school inputs on noncognitive performance skills suggest an improvement in skills among students who transferred to a school with a lower concentration of minority students (between 0.07 and 0.11 standard deviations). Also, students whose class size decreased seemed to improve their behavioral performance (0.02 standard deviations from the index), a smaller coefficient than Dee and West’s.
Thinking more specifically about particular noncognitive skills, we also highlight the importance of evaluations of programs targeted at improving executive function skills. For instance, some additions to school curricula and computerized and interactive games have been found to have a positive impact on improving children’s executive function skills, as summarized by Diamond (2013). The studies underlying her explanations (which also examine early childhood programs such as the Chicago School Readiness Project, or the practice of martial arts) used randomized evaluations to assess their impacts.
The importance of simultaneous effects
Several works cited in this paper have indicated a mutual relationship between cognitive and noncognitive skills. Indeed, although these skills are not often studied in an integrated way, multiple authors suggest that the processes of socio-emotional development and cognitive development are intertwined (Levin 1970; Cunha et al. 2006; Cunha, Heckman, and Schennach 2010; Olson 2012; Shriver and Weissberg 2005). Building on Levin’s (1970) earlier work, a recent attempt to study the two types of skills in an integrated way within the school setting is provided by Garcia (2013). Her framework models the production of both cognitive and noncognitive skills, allowing for simultaneity (or interrelationship) between the two skills by using a simultaneous equation model.31 Garcia’s study uses data for students between kindergarten and eighth grade (from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998–1999) and two indices that represent the two main types of educational outcomes—cognitive and noncognitive. She finds that the interdependent relationships between the two types of skills are statistically significant across the entire analyzed school period in both directions: Noncognitive skills are important predictors of cognitive performance, and cognitive skills are also influential in the level of noncognitive performance. The patterns over time suggest that the importance of noncognitive skills as a determinant of cognitive performance increases very little over the earlier grade levels, but steadily increases across the later grades. Meanwhile, the absolute importance of cognitive skills as a determinant of noncognitive skills significantly increases through the earlier grade levels (kindergarten through third), and then decreases in later grade levels (fifth through eighth).32 Although the exact pattern may be driven by the items that compose the indices used and by their measurement,33 the simultaneous relationship is very strong and raises important questions with implications for the evaluation of education policy.
In line with the research in this area, the findings affirm the importance of better understanding the interconnections between skills, so that the evaluation of interventions in one area—in particular, those targeting cognitive skills—also includes an assessment of how those affect the other domains (Olson 2012, 23; and previous citations in this subsection). As such, they point to the difficulty of trying to boost cognitive skills while ignoring the need to nurture noncognitive skills.
Policy implications
The above sections convey the importance of noncognitive skills. These skills matter because they correlate with civic and democratic participation. They also matter because they correspond to what employers look for, and there is some evidence that they correlate with higher productivity and earnings. Noncognitive skills correlate as well with academic performance. We also know that noncognitive skills are developed in the school years, that their development is dependent on family and societal characteristics, and also on school and teacher factors, and that they are affected by the instruction and social interactions that take place in school.
Since noncognitive skills matter and can be nurtured in schools, developing them should be an explicit goal of public education. Even though there is still much to learn about these skills’ impacts and how to best nurture them, these conclusions indicate that education policy should be, at the very least, responsible for establishing structures that are conducive to their development, as is the case for cognitive skills.
Which changes to education policy can help it best fulfill this mission?
To ensure that noncognitive skills are encouraged (and are not harmed), policy should shift in accordance with the following recommendations, which build both on theory and on practices already in place. While the recommendations require changes to some aspects of current education policy, they also reflect recent momentum in this direction that points to increasing recognition of the importance of noncognitive skills.
In particular, we suggest a three-part set of actions: 1) build on growing momentum to shift to more positive and supports-based approaches to teacher and school accountability and student discipline; 2) learn from and adapt policies and practices in the areas of early childhood education, afterschool and summer enrichment, and special education—which have long emphasized noncognitive skills—to make them core components of K–12 policies; and 3) look to districts that are piloting noncognitive skills–related strategies as potential models and to state- and federal-level policies that support such strategies.
Broadening and refining accountability
Accountability practices and policies must be broadened in a way that makes explicit the expectation that schools and teachers contribute to the development of noncognitive skills. Making the development of the whole child central to the mission of education policy would help improve evaluation and accountability through changes to curriculum, teacher preparation and support, other aspects of schools’ functioning, and evaluation systems. Specifically, incentives promoted by the enhanced accountability system would be aligned with widening the curriculum, cultivating the proper climate within the school, promoting teachers’ investment in relationships with students, and ensuring teaching time for strategies that are conducive to the development of noncognitive (as well as cognitive) skills.
Designing such a system requires ensuring that new policies avoid replicating the mistakes of current accountability systems focused on cognitive skills, which have turned out to be too rigid and too narrow (Ravitch 2013). Indeed, such a broader education policy agenda could reverse some of the dysfunctional aspects of current systems, leading to fairer and more realistic education policies generally.
Curriculum and teaching methods
The identification of the noncognitive skills that play important roles in education should prompt a discussion of how to design a broader curriculum as well as specific instructional strategies to promote those skills. Some noncognitive skills can be taught both directly and also indirectly, i.e., they are outcomes/products of training in specific academic subjects.34 That broader curriculum should thus include ways to both directly promote specific noncognitive dimensions and to develop them indirectly, by leveraging other kinds of skills (Olson 2012, 19). For example, having students work on group projects has been found to effectively nurture skills such as collaboration, critical thinking, and communication (Friedlaender et al. 2014).
For teachers to effectively convey these new curricular domains, they will need new and different kinds of preparation and support. Education policy thus must also be enhanced to ensure that teachers are appropriately supported and trained, and that they receive instruction in both the subject and content, and also help in learning how to teach it. For example, in their research into student-centered learning approaches, Diane Friedlaender and her colleagues list a number of supports for teachers, from higher-quality preparation and induction to increased time for planning and collaboration (Friedlaender et al. 2014).
Evaluation of teachers’ performance
If teachers are expected to help students excel in both cognitive and noncognitive dimensions, as is needed for those children’s full development, then teachers should be incentivized to do so and held accountable for doing so. Indeed, many critics of current accountability systems see the lack of such balance as a key flaw. If teachers are held accountable only for their part in developing students’ cognitive skills (essentially math and reading), there is an inherent disincentive to focus on developing their broader skills.
Given concerns regarding current evaluation systems—in particular, those that rely on student test scores and growth, like value-added models—adding noncognitive skills to those models poses both added concerns but also the potential for improvement. Current models do not validly capture teachers’ contribution to students’ learning even in the few tested subjects (Baker et al. 2010; Haertel 2013; American Statistical Association 2014). Rather than trying to tweak such models to also capture teachers’ contribution to another, even harder-to-measure set of skills, we should therefore explore other options. These likely include some combination of higher-quality observations directly tied to support for teachers to improve in areas identified (Darling-Hammond, Wilhoit, and Pittenger 2014; Friedlaender et al. 2014); school-level observations/inspections geared to helping struggling schools improve (Darling-Hammond, Wilhoit, and Pittenger 2014; Rothstein, Jacobsen, and Wilder 2008); and district- and state-level comparisons of similar student groups’ test scores and other outcome data to identify best practices (Rothstein, Jacobsen, and Wilder 2008). There are currently few options available, but the hope is that the demand to evaluate teacher performance more broadly will spur the development of more appropriate evaluation systems overall.35
As three prominent education scholars emphasize in their recent report on developing a new accountability paradigm, it is also critical that accountability be reciprocal: “Each level of the system – from federal and state governments to districts and schools – should be accountable for the contributions it must make to produce high-quality learning opportunities for each and every child” (Darling-Hammond, Wilhoit, and Pittenger 2014, 2).
Adjust school disciplinary policies
Many of the existing disciplinary measures used to combat specific students’ misbehavior are at odds with the goal of nurturing noncognitive skills. Harsh measures, including in-school and out-of-school suspensions and expulsions, referrals to law enforcement, and even arrests (often called, collectively, zero-tolerance policies), are increasingly used to punish low-level infractions (Noguera 2011).36 Such responses to uncooperative, disorderly, or disruptive behaviors are not only unlikely to prevent such behaviors in the future, but have been found to be counterproductive for the child’s development. Such strategies correlate negatively with school achievement and school climate and positively with dropouts (Emmer et al. 2013).
Disciplinary measures need to be rooted in an ability to support and promote better noncognitive behavior, and in prevention of misbehavior, rather than in just sanctioning wrongdoing. These policies could include restorative practices such as peer mediation, group responsibility, and counseling, among others. And evidence points to the increased efficacy of such positive approaches, shifting from zero-tolerance to preventive and supportive policies that embrace support and promotion of safe learning environments (Boccanfuso and Kuhfeld 2011; Skiba and Knesting 2002; Skiba 2010).
The Supportive School Disciplinary Initiative (spearheaded by the Department of Education and Department of Justice) was launched in 2011 with the goal of supporting the use of school discipline practices that foster safe, supportive, and productive learning environments while keeping students in school. One useful resource is a new guide explaining how states can develop such practices and how policymakers can work to enact and implement them (Restorative Practices Working Group 2014).
Finally, there are encouraging examples at both the state and district levels of a shift away from harsh and punitive disciplinary practices and toward these types of supportive measures. California recently became the first state to ban suspensions for “willful defiance” (Siders 2014). And a number of large school districts—including Baltimore, Boston, New York City, Minneapolis, and Oakland—have adopted restorative policies that steer students toward positive and reinforcing means of addressing problem behaviors (Restorative Practices Working Group 2014, 10–11).
Learn from out-of-mainstream school settings: early-childhood education, special education, and after-school activities
There are at least three prominent education contexts in which experts know quite a lot about how to effectively nurture noncognitive skills. These include early childhood education, after-school and summer programs, and special education. Adapting lessons learned in these settings to K–12 education is another path toward making the development of noncognitive skills a core component of U.S. education policy.
In contrast to the heavily cognitive focus in K–12 settings, the early childhood field has long acknowledged the importance of socio-emotional skills and, as such, made their development a key part of curriculum and measurement strategies. Early childhood education thus provides examples of how to ensure that noncognitive skills are nurtured, and also of how the assessment of outcomes and practices can be adapted to include noncognitive skills.37
Key contributions from the early childhood field include the importance of playtime in helping children to develop certain noncognitive skills, such as self-regulation and confidence (Galinsky 2006; Albert Shanker Institute 2009). Scholars also point to the role of strong teacher–student relationships in building other skills, including trust and curiosity (Galinsky 2006). And many point to the n