{"title":"Socio-emotional Skills and the Socioeconomic Achievement Gap","authors":"R. Gruijters, Isabel J. Raabe, Nicolas Hübner","doi":"10.1177/00380407231216424","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Empirical evidence suggests children’s socio-emotional skills—an important determinant of school achievement—vary according to socioeconomic family background. This study assesses the degree to which differences in socio-emotional skills contribute to the achievement gap between socioeconomically advantaged and disadvantaged children. We used data on 74 countries from the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment, which contains an extensive set of psychological measures, including growth mindset, self-efficacy, and work mastery. We developed three conceptual scenarios to analyze the role of socio-emotional skills in learning inequality: simple accumulation, multiplicative accumulation, and compensatory accumulation. Our findings are in line with the simple accumulation scenario: Socioeconomically advantaged children have somewhat higher levels of socio-emotional skills than their disadvantaged peers, but the effect of these skills on academic performance is largely similar in both groups. Using a counterfactual decomposition method, we show that the measured socio-emotional skills explain no more than 8.8 percent of the socioeconomic achievement gap. Based on these findings, we argue that initiatives to promote social and emotional learning are unlikely to substantially reduce educational inequality.","PeriodicalId":51398,"journal":{"name":"Sociology of Education","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.3000,"publicationDate":"2023-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Sociology of Education","FirstCategoryId":"95","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380407231216424","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Empirical evidence suggests children’s socio-emotional skills—an important determinant of school achievement—vary according to socioeconomic family background. This study assesses the degree to which differences in socio-emotional skills contribute to the achievement gap between socioeconomically advantaged and disadvantaged children. We used data on 74 countries from the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment, which contains an extensive set of psychological measures, including growth mindset, self-efficacy, and work mastery. We developed three conceptual scenarios to analyze the role of socio-emotional skills in learning inequality: simple accumulation, multiplicative accumulation, and compensatory accumulation. Our findings are in line with the simple accumulation scenario: Socioeconomically advantaged children have somewhat higher levels of socio-emotional skills than their disadvantaged peers, but the effect of these skills on academic performance is largely similar in both groups. Using a counterfactual decomposition method, we show that the measured socio-emotional skills explain no more than 8.8 percent of the socioeconomic achievement gap. Based on these findings, we argue that initiatives to promote social and emotional learning are unlikely to substantially reduce educational inequality.
经验证据表明,儿童的社会情感技能是学业成绩的重要决定因素,但会因社会经济家庭背景的不同而有所差异。本研究评估了社会情感技能的差异在多大程度上造成了社会经济条件优越的儿童与处境不利的儿童之间的成绩差距。我们使用了 2018 年国际学生评估项目(Programme for International Student Assessment)中 74 个国家的数据,其中包含一套广泛的心理测量指标,包括成长心态、自我效能感和工作掌握程度。我们提出了三种概念情景来分析社会情感技能在学习不平等中的作用:简单积累、乘法积累和补偿积累。我们的研究结果与简单积累情景一致:社会经济条件优越的儿童的社会情感技能水平略高于其处于不利地位的同龄人,但这些技能对学业成绩的影响在两个群体中基本相似。通过反事实分解法,我们发现社会情感技能对社会经济成绩差距的解释不超过 8.8%。基于这些发现,我们认为促进社会和情感学习的措施不太可能大幅减少教育不平等。
期刊介绍:
Sociology of Education (SOE) provides a forum for studies in the sociology of education and human social development. SOE publishes research that examines how social institutions and individuals’ experiences within these institutions affect educational processes and social development. Such research may span various levels of analysis, ranging from the individual to the structure of relations among social and educational institutions. In an increasingly complex society, important educational issues arise throughout the life cycle.