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Report shows key role of holistic education
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THE best educational institutions in the world recognize that development of the whole child is critical to ensuring students are able to prosper in the 21st century world. Almost everyone in these institutions would acknowledge that high self-esteem, strong communication skills, creativity, collaboration with others and the will to persevere are all critical capabilities for modern life. So what works to enhance these skills and how can we better measure them in students?
The OECD (Organization for economic Co-operation and Development) recently published a book authored by Economist Koji Miyamoto, “The Power of Social and Emotional Skills,” which presents a synthesis of the available research on the important role of socio-emotional skills in education. The book persuasively argues that increasing socio-emotional skills and abilities improve the individual, the society, and the economy. The study also shows how policy makers, schools and families can work to foster socio-emotional skills and meaningfully measure the results.
Miyamoto joins me today to discuss this essential work.
Q: What are some practical suggestions for parents or teachers to boost socio-emotional skills in children? What do you think are the most significant ways that schools can develop students’ socio-emotional skills?
A: While there are abundant anecdotes and case studies documenting success stories, there is a lack of “hard evidence” on ways to raise these soft skills. An exception is the impressive base of evidence gathered by CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning), which documents useful approaches for schools and teachers to enhance socio-emotional skills. Some of them introduce new social and emotional learning programs as part of the core curricular activities. For instance, the Second Step Program in the United States introduces age-appropriate weekly lessons for pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. They include activities designed to foster empathy, emotional coping and problem solving as well as to prevent bullying and substance abuse.
An alternative way to enhance children’s socio-emotional skills is to improve existing learning environments and activities in schools and at home. For instance, a program called RULER in the United States is designed to improve the classroom atmosphere by creating a sense of warmth and mutual respect, reducing hostility, and improving teacher sensitivity to students’ emotional and academic needs. Extra-curricular activities such as after-school sports and arts activities can also be effective means to enhance socio-emotional skills.
Many successful programs make extra efforts to link family, school and community environments.
Given the limited evidence we have now, it is perhaps premature to point out which approaches work best. But, the good news is that we already know some of these programs are quite effective and yield a high rate of return. So far, most schools rely on report cards, which usually include teachers’ evaluations of children’s socio-emotional skills. While these instruments don’t necessarily provide an accurate measure of children’s socio-emotional skills, it is still a useful tool for teachers to reflect on children’s diverse capabilities, for parents to better understand how their children behave at school and for children to receive feedback on how they are performing on social and emotional skills.
Q: What was the most unexpected thing you learned in your research at OECD?
A: Our literature reviews and longitudinal analyses of nine countries found out that a number of socio-emotional skills including self-esteem, self-efficacy and sociability consistently played an important role in people’s lives across countries. While there are specific socio-emotional skills that are likely to play a particularly important role in certain cultures (e.g. modesty in Asia), there is also a common set of skills that seem to matter wherever you are.
Another important (although perhaps not entirely unexpected) finding is that social and emotional skills do not always bring about positive outcomes. For instance, we found out that Norwegian adolescents who are more extroverted (e.g. friendly, talkative) are more likely to become obese during adulthood.
Q: What additional research do you believe would be worthwhile in this area?
A: The evidence base that would be useful for teachers and parents to raise children’s socio-emotional skills is still very limited. This is due, in part, to the under-developed measurement instruments available for measuring socio-emotional skills across countries, cultures and population groups. We need to invest a lot more time and efforts to improve and validate these instruments. This will subsequently help to improve toolkits that parents, teachers and policy makers can use to monitor the progress of children’s social and emotional development. This will also help improve the quality of evidence, by providing improved measures that can be integrated into intervention studies and large scale longitudinal studies. These studies will eventually help identify what works to enhance children’s socio-emotional skills.
C. M. Rubin is the author of two online series for which she received a 2011 Upton Sinclair award, “The Global Search for Education” and “How Will We Read?” She is also the author of three bestselling books, including “The Real Alice in Wonderland,” and is the publisher of CMRubinWorld.
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