To Increase Student Achievement Should We Focus on Social Skills?

It was quite some time ago we wrote about Martin Haberman’s viewpoint regarding learning and teacher preparation programs. In his article “The Source and Nature of Best Practice in Teaching,” the columnist and Board advisor to EdNews.org defined learning as “changed behavior.” We noted at the time that Haberman made no specific mention of traditional educational jargon such as ‘knowledge acquisition’ or ‘concept mastery’ in his definition.

Haberman’s Views
Most importantly, the major premise of Haberman’s piece involved the notion that schools of education are focusing on the field of psychology when training new teachers when they in fact should be focused on sociology. Haberman wrote:

“We have a solid and expanding body of knowledge regarding how people learn from the field of psychology. The problem is that psychology tells us how individuals learn. If we want to know how groups of people learn we must turn to sociology and anthropology or to biology and chemistry but then we may no longer speak of ‘learning’ we speak of ‘socialization’ in the case of the social sciences, or ‘growth’ in the case of the physical sciences.

“There are at least a dozen fields of scholarly discipline that explain causes for changed behavior. Unfortunately for teacher education as a field of inquiry and for teachers of children and youth, education scholars make one discipline the premier explanation for understanding the causes of changed behavior. Other equally or more relevant academic disciplines for explaining changed behavior in schools are marginalized to a secondary, supplementary and less functional role in explaining and predicting learning.”

And in a scathing rebuke of the current system of education, Haberman also noted:

“Schools are places organized on the bizarre expectation that groups of children and youth of the same age “learn” at roughly the same rate and in the same ways. Schools organized on the basis of age-grades are an American cultural and historic phenomenon that have not only survived but thrived …….. Schools reflect what America wants not what America needs.”

Interesting Research Now Emerging
A not-yet-published study of 207 school-based programs designed to foster children’s social and emotional skills appears to back Haberman’s anthropological viewpoint. The four year study sponsored by the Chicago-based group CASEL, the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, reveals that if the teacher takes the time to teach students to better manage their emotions through the practice of empathy, caring, and cooperation, there will not only be an improved social climate in the classroom, student academic achievement levels also improve in the process.

The study appears to directly support the movement to promote social and emotional learning, a push that is growing nationally. The State of Illinois has set standards for teaching the subject and an number of states from Connecticut to Alaska have begun incorporating lessons in social and emotional learning.

Of course, the support for social and emotional learning comes into conflict with the pressures being imposed by NCLB. The need to demonstrate greater levels of academic achievement has resulted in far more schools spending greater time on academics and less on those areas that would foster greater socialization.

The CASEL Study
The researchers examined more than 700 studies of school-based programs that had some emphasis on the development of social and emotional skills of students. The programs ranged from a focus on character education to anti-bullying efforts to conflict-resolution training.

The researchers then culled 207 studies for their analysis and set up training groups for a follow-up study. First and foremost, the results most emphatically supported the rationale for such programs. After their lessons, students in the experimental groups exposed to the social and emotional development programs were better behaved, more positive, and less anxious than their control-group peers. What astonished many was that the children in those groups also had grown greater academically as measured by their grades and test scores.

In fact, the experimental group scored 11 percentile points higher than the comparison-group students using the midrange comparison measure known as an “improvement index.” The analysis revealed that the positive effects persisted six months or more after students took part in the programs. In another interesting but rather intuitive development, the lessons were most effective when they were provided by teachers rather the program developers.

Critics Abound
While the report is not scheduled for publication until early 2008, naysayers have begun the drumbeat. The proponents that espouse a “get back to the basics” focus will clearly find issue with the summary.

But we are now at a time when we expect schools to educate all children and taking all of them to unprecedented achievement levels. Therefore it is imperative that we examine the approach being used - the work of Haberman and CASEL may actually lead to one of the critical developments that would make increased learning for all children a real possibility.