Teaching Adolescents To Become Learners The Role of Noncognitive Factors in Shaping School Performance: A Critical Literature Review

by Camille A. Farrington, Melissa Roderick, Elaine Allensworth

Teaching Adolescents To Become Learners summarizes the research on five categories of noncognitive factors that are related to academic performance: academic behaviors, academic perseverance, academic mindsets, learning strategies and social skills, and proposes a framework for thinking about how these factors interact to affect academic performance, and what the relationship is between noncognitive factors and classroom/school context, as well as the larger socio-cultural context.

It examines whether there is substantial evidence that noncognitive factors matter for students' long‐term success, clarifying how and why these factors matter, determining if these factors are malleable and responsive to context, determining if they play a role in persistent racial/ethnic or gender gaps in academic achievement, and illuminating how educators might best support the development of important noncognitive factors within their schools and classrooms.

The review suggests some promising levers for change at the classroom level, and challenges the notion that hard work and effort are character traits of individual students, instead suggesting that the amount of effort a student puts in to academic work can depend, in large part, on instructional and contextual factors in the classroom.

In addition, the review also presents challenges for future research on noncognitive factors.

108 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2012

Reviews

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review analyzes how educators can improve student perseverance and academic learning through academic mindset and learning strategies. Academic mindset influences the degree to which the student engages in academic learning.

Many times, a teacher may perceive a student to be lazy when in actuality the student may not have effective strategies or may think she is incapable of learning the material. Still, others withdraw for fear of failure or ostracization by peers. Most students, however, actually do want to succeed.

Developing adolescent learners requires paying attention to students' mindset, skills, strategies, and behaviors, content knowledge, and academic skills. The authors' goal in writing this review was "to develop a clear and evidence-based framework for considering the role of noncognitive factors in academic performance."

[Angélique (Angel) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite being created before COVID altered the educational landscape and being unnecessarily repetitive at times, this literature review offers a solid foundation of research educators can use to choose evidence-based strategies to improve academic outcomes. As a school counselor, I found this report most helpful when read through the lens of Hatching Results for Secondary School Counseling: Implementing Core Curriculum, Individual Student Planning, and Other Tier One Activities , particularly Hatch et al.’s section on using a Non-Cognitive Needs Survey to assist in planning core curriculum. That framing allowed me to finish this review with clearer ideas about how to implement a counseling curriculum that better supports the academic development of students and how to help teachers think more accurately about the strategies they use to support students in their classrooms. While I wish the authors had provided more explicit strategies for putting the research into practice and helping colleagues do the same, I still believe this report serves as a good start for educators seeking more research-backed approaches to improving student success.