Character. It’s the old-school descriptor for the mental and moral qualities unique to an individual, what today’s educational theorists call “noncognitive abilities.”
In recent years, responding to a renaissance of the idea that character matters in learning, researchers have begun to study the relationship between a student’s emerging personal qualities — resilience, self-control, conscientiousness and optimism — and success at school.
A growing body of evidence confirms these noncognitive skills and abilities not directly captured by tests of academic achievement and ability might predict a broad range of outcomes.
When it comes to life success, character counts.
Both intrapersonal skills (such as the ability to regulate one’s behaviour and persevere toward goals) and interpersonal skills (such as the ability to collaborate with others) are believed to be key complements to academic achievement in determining students’ success.
The California Office to Reform Education, a coalition of nine California school districts, has been working with a new assessment program that takes into account measurement of a student’s noncognitive abilities such as self-management and social awareness. A field test measured four social-emotional skills involving more than 450,000 students in grades 3-12.
Analysis of data from the CORE field test indicates the scales used to measure student noncognitive skills demonstrate strong correlation with key indicators of academic performance and behaviour, both between and within schools.
These findings provide a broadly encouraging view of the potential for learning social-emotional skills as an adjunct to school performance.
The origins of social-emotional skills have provided a fertile field for researchers interested in how children learn from and respond to the cues and signals adults provide.
When those signals indicate that life is a tough, negative and unforgiving business, neuroscientists have shown that children experience what is described as “toxic stress,” which can make it difficult to moderate their responses to disappointments and provocations. This stress can apparently disrupt the development of higher-order thinking skills such as attention control and cognitive flexibility — being open to new ideas and making sense of the world around us.
Subsequently, children are constantly on the lookout for threats and produce patterns of behaviour that are self-defeating in school: fighting, talking back and being wary of connections with peers and teachers.
One of the chief insights provided by neurobiological research is that children who have experienced early emotional adversity are often guided by later emotional and psychological and even hormonal forces that are not controlled or even rational.
All of which lends further credibility to a program already being adopted in many communities in B.C. and across Canada.
Started in 1996 by child advocate Mary Gordon, “Roots of Empathy” is an evidence-based classroom program that has been shown to reduce levels of aggression among children while increasing social-emotional competence and empathy.
Gordon’s goal with her program was “to build caring, peaceful and civil societies through the development of empathy in children and adults.”
The program is based on monthly visits to the classroom by an infant and his or her parents. Lessons emerging from student observations of the visit include emotional understanding, caring and respect for others and infant development.
A University of British Columbia study in Vancouver and Toronto, involving 585 children ages 9 to 11 and 28 teachers, showed Gordon’s program resulted in positive impacts on children’s social development and behavioural adjustment.
One thing seems clear: Further exploration of noncognitive skills can boost knowledge of how education processes and interventions work, particularly how behaviour, resilience, self-control, conscientiousness and optimism, as well as interactions with others (emotional literacy), determine a child’s approach to learning.
Geoff Johnson is a retired superintendent of schools.
