Good News Class Clowns
By Raychelle Burks
Class clowns, rejoice! Academic performance depends more on aptitude than attitude.Setting out to see what predicts future academic performance, an international research team lead by Greg Duncan of Northwestern University evaluated data from six major developmental studies of tots and teens. After crunching the numbers, researchers found that a tot’s math skills were the best predictor of future academic performance. Reading skills came in next, with third place going to attention. Surprising to authors, was the effect of a tot’s behavior (what researchers call “socioemotional skills”) had on future academic performance – not a whole lot.
“Measures of socioemotional behaviors ... were generally insignificant predictors of later academic performance, even among children with relatively high levels of problem behavior,” stated researchers in their article in the November issue of the journal Developmental Psychology. So, as long as tots know math and reading basics, they can run amuck? Not quite.
It turns out that academic performance and school success are not the same thing. “Academic skills are only one facet of educational success,” stated researchers noting that problem behavior or social skills come into play with “a child’s engagement in school and motivation for learning, relationships with peers and teachers, and overall self-concept and school adjustment”.If you thought this research would give you license to disrupt biology class with an impression of a monkey, think again. School – that place where the academic and social collide – requires more than smarts.
Need to disrupt your day a bit further? Try these links:
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Image: Don Wang
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