Social skills are just as important as basic cognitive ones. This is why

There is now ample evidence that socio-emotional skills are as important as basic cognition in driving individual success. Among these skills, grit clearly stands out. Grit is generally defined as perseverance in a productive task in the face of — often repeated and frustrating — setbacks. While it has been documented that grit predicts a large array of achievement outcomes, until recently, very little was known about how malleable it was in childhood and, whether it was possible to foster it in the classroom environment. Our new paper provides convincing evidence in this regard.

To answer the question of “malleability” in a causal manner, we conducted a randomized field experiment in Turkey with almost 3000 fourth-graders (8-10 year olds) in over 100 classrooms. We chose to run this experiment in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighbourhoods in Istanbul, with the hope of addressing the widening socioeconomic achievement gap in the world.

We offered elementary school teachers from randomly chosen schools a specific curriculum promoting a growth mindset and encouraging teachers to adopt classroom practices that are consistent with such mindset. Growth mindset, in a nutshell, is a belief that skills can be improved through sustained effort. People who maintain this mindset are expected to persevere more, exhibit higher resilience to setbacks, handle frustration caused by failures and eventually reach their target. This hypothesized productive cycle is what motivated the paper’s colourful title, Ever Failed, Try Again, Succeed Better.

 
Συνέχεια ανάγνωσης εδώ: www.weforum.org