148: Social Skills

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EVIDENCE ON SOCIAL SKILLS:
  • Social skills improve academic performance in elementary, middle & high schools (most research focused on elementary school students)
  • Exact effects of social skills on academic performance is unclear
  • Social skills:
    • socially accepted learned behaviors that enable a learner to interact effectively with others and to avoid socially unacceptable responses (Gresham & Elliot)
    • cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy, self control (Malecki & Elliot)
    • self-management, self-awareness, social awareness, relationships skills, responsible decision-making (CASEL)
  • Hard to isolate social skills from other non-cognitive factors that support academic achievement in the research
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOCIAL SKILLS & ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE:
  • Research shows that social skills (+ other non-cognitive factors) improve academic performance
  • One theory – effects of social skills are indirect, act through academic behaviors
    • developing social skills helps students have less behavior problems resulting in more learning engagement and better performance
    • social skills helps students actively participate in learning activities
    • social skills act as academic enablers of good academic behaviors
  • Another theory – teachers value good behavior and reward it with good grades
ARE SOCIAL SKILLS MALLEABLE?
  • Behavior skill-building approaches lead to more enduring positive changes that programs that do not emphasize skills
  • Skills such as stress management, empathy, problem-solving, and good decision making can be intentionally developed in school-based programs
ROLE OF CLASSROOMS IN DEVELOPING SOCIAL SKILLS
  • Classrooms play an important role in shaping students’ social skills
  • Interpersonal, instructional & environmental factors affect students’ social behavior including
    • norms for high expectations and high support to meet expectations
    • caring teacher-student relationships
    • proactive classroom management
    • cooperative learning
    • safe classroom environments that reinforce good behaviors
    • students feel valued
CLASSROOM STRATEGIES FOR DEVELOPING SOCIAL SKILLS
  • Teaching students to process, integrate, select and apply social-emotional skills in appropriate ways
  • Effective approaches involve
    • step-by-step approaches  that actively involve students in skills development
    • extended periods of time
    • clear and explicit goals
CAN CHANGING SOCIAL SKILLS NARROW ACHIEVEMENT GAPS
  • Research doesn’t indicate either way whether or not social skills will narrow achievement gaps in women and minority groups
  • Some troubling related research findings:
    • 57% of African American males are suspended – much more than any other race or gender (NCES)
    • Minority students may experience undue disciplinary action in school (Gregory et al.)
    • Race is strong predictor of the discipline gap
 
SUMMARY OF RESEARCH ON SOCIAL SKILLS
  • Social skills overlap extensively with other noncognitive factors
  • Without better delineation of social skills with other noncognitive factors it is hard to isolate the effects of social skills on academic performance
  • Social skills may be less (more) valued / practiced in schools that primarily focus on individual (cooperative) learning tasks
  • More research is needed that considers how classroom context affect how social skills contribute to student learning

 

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 Implementing social skills training can help students be more successful in a PBL environment that relies heavily on group work.   Social skills act as social enablers that help students better leverage learning opportunities.  Effective social skills programs tend to be administered by teachers, involve step-by-step demonstrations of skills, extend over time, and have clear and explicit goals.

 

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Preparation Steps
  • Identify what social skills will help students succeed in the conditionals of your classrooms.
  • Write character learning targets that describe desirable social skills in student friend language.
  • Research scaffolding strategies that relate to targeted social that help students with social skills.  See Agency and Collaboration articles for ideas.
  • Design a program that will teach students how to develop social skills related to character learning targets over an extended period of time
  • Build a positive safe culture that values the social skills that will be promoted and taught over the course of time
Early Implementation Steps
  • Implement a program that will teach students how to develop social skills related to character learning targets over an extended period of time
  • Use student reflections and observations to see if program is working and to refine activities
  • Use student reflections to help students become more aware of whether or not social skills are improving their learning experiences
  • Be mindful of how discipline interventions may or may not be contributing to a discipline gap due to gender or race
Advanced Implementation Steps
  • Use student data to identify what social skills scaffolding strategies are the most effective and incorporate these into classroom systems and routines

 

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