Academic Achievement and Emotions : How can EQ improve grades?

Academic Achievement and Emotions

Emotional Intelligence Research: Indicators Point to the Importance of the teaching of these emotional intelligence skills to improve academic achievement. Emotions are key to managing ones self inorder to benefit in the academic sphere!

Below you will find a summary of research findings that show children who receive lessons in social and emotional behavior do better in school and later in life. In fact,developing self confidence and effective strategies to cope with everyday life are so important for children that research indicates they improve in an academic environment once their have these strategies. Basic human patterning is emotional therefore by learning how to cope with emotional situations children can expand thier academic skills. We need to be helping students develop the ability to think critically and analytically while creating innovative solutions to problems. We as educators must to more to raise academic achievement by using knowledge of emotions and how they work.

Academic achievement and student behaviour improve in schools with programs that teach EQ skills.

Edutopia found that:

•Oakland, California: Students in Child Development Project (CDP) schools are more cooperative, helpful, and empathetic, are able to settle disputes among themselves without adult intervention, and are more committed to such democratic values as fairness and justice. •New York City: Children who received about twenty-five lessons a year in the Resolving Conflict Creatively Program RCCP curriculum, which is a violence prevention program with a core underpinning of emotional and social instruction, performed significantly better on standardized academic achievement tests than other children.

•Springfield, Massachusetts: Over the two-year period, the Responsive Classroom group also showed significantly greater growth on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. In 1999, fourth-grade test scores at the school using Responsive Classroom, Kensington Avenue School, were the most improved in the state.

•Seattle: An evaluation of the three groups of students at age eighteen found that those who had participated in the full social development program from grades one through six were involved in fewer violent acts, were less likely to use alcohol, drugs, or tobacco, were less sexually active, and had fewer teen pregnancies, and were better behaved in school.

Laura Mirsky found in a recent study that

•The study showed that students who participate in school-based programs that focus on social and emotional learning, compared to students who do not, improve significantly in terms of social and emotional skills; attitudes about themselves, others and school; social and classroom behavior; emotional distress such as stress, anxiety and depression; achievement test scores (11 percentage points higher); and school grades. •Positive social, emotional and behavioral outcomes did not occur apart from academic performance, the study showed, but rather enhanced it.

•Studies that collected follow-up data in the above-listed categories showed that such positive benefits persisted over time.

•Effect of these emotional learning programs on academics was nearly twice as strong as that of smaller class size.

•Director of CSF Buxmont schools Rick Pforter, “From experience, I’ve seen that when kids’ behavior is better, when their self-esteem is better, they do better in academics. And it works the other way, too: When kids do better in academics, their self-esteem improves. The two things reinforce each other.”

Katharine Ragozzino, Hank Resnik, Mary Utne-O’Brien, and Roger P.Weissberg found that:

•Increasingly educators and policymakers are also discovering the importance of social and emotional variables for academic performance and achievement

•SEL programming also provides students with varied skills that positively affect academic achievement.

•Rather than diverting schools from their primary academic mission, improving students’ social and emotional competence advances the academic mission of schools, while also ensuring that they meet their broader mission to produce caring, responsible, and knowledgeable students.

•Social and emotional learning provides students with basic skills for success not just in school but ultimately in their personal, professional, and civic lives.

•Wilson, Gottfredson, and Najaka’s study revealed that social and emotional learning programs increased attendance and decreased the dropout rate.

• Zins et al. (in press) found that SEL programs improved student attitudes, behaviors, and academic performance.

•Only recently, however, have researchers realized that a child’s emotional life has an impact on these important outcomes

•Findings also support the hypotheses made by educators and psychologists about the potential utility of integrating lessons on EI in school

•The results support the incremental validity of EI and provide positive indications of the importance of EI in adolescent’s academic and social development

•Research suggests that integrating lessons on socio-emotional learning in schools might improve students’ performance, decrease maladaptive behavior and increase prosocial behavior

•The most robust findings were between EI and Self-confidence, Prosocial behavior, and academic grades