Education for Life and Work Developing Transferable Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century (2012) / Chapter Skim
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3 Importance of Deeper Learning and 21st Century Skills
3 Importance of Deeper Learning and 21st Century Skills
Pages 37-68
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From page 37... ...
. Measured cognitive, intrapersonal, or interpersonal competencies appeared to account for surprisingly little of these relationships between years of educational attainment and labor market success.
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From page 38... ...
Most personality psychologists have centered their work on the "big five" personality traits -- conscientiousness, openness, agreeableness, emotional stability, and extroversion -- plus general cognitive ability. Although these traits have traditionally been viewed as relatively stable across the life span, a growing body of evidence indicates that that personality traits change in response to general life experiences (e.g., Roberts, Walton, and Viechtbauer, 2006; Almlund et al., 2011)
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From page 39... ...
. In elementary school, general cognitive ability is the strongest correlate of grades, although all five personality factors are positively correlated with grades.
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From page 40... ...
from the 236 individual study Neither behavior problems nor regressions analyzing the relationship Interpersonal and Intrapersonal Skills: mental health problems were between school-entry reading and The six longitudinal data sets included associated with later achievement, math achievement and noncognitive measures of attention (intrapersonal) , holding constant achievement as well skills and later reading and math antisocial behavior (both intrapersonal as child and family characteristics.
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From page 41... ...
At the elementary school level, Meta-analysis of studies of the Cognitive Skills: Some of the studies cognitive ability is the strongest correlation between personality traits included tests of general cognitive predictor of grades. At the high and academic performance.
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From page 42... ...
predictor of job performance across results of 11 prior meta-analyses of all performance measures in all the relationship between Five Factor Interpersonal: Measures of extroversion, (job performance) occupations studied, with average Model personality traits and job agreeableness correlations ranging from the mid performance.
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From page 43... ...
considerably more important than Authors used ordinary least squares intelligence cognitive ability for success in the to estimate the effect of cognitive labor market. and noncognitive skills on wages, Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Skills: earnings, and unemployment.
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From page 44... ...
Correlations Correlations Regression-Adjusted Correlations Primary school Secondary Tertiary Primary Primary Personality Factors Outcome is school grades. Conscientiousness .28 .21 .23 Openness .24 .12 .07 Agreeableness .30 .05 .06 Emotional stability .20 .01 –.01 Extroversion .18 –.01 –.03 Cognitive ability .58 .24 .23 Skills and Behaviors Outcome is reading achievement.
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From page 45... ...
,2003) .3 Many studies have established simple and, in some cases, adjusted correlations between this set of intrapersonal and interpersonal competencies and academic outcomes in the early grades (e.g., Vitaro et al., 2005, and Currie and Stabile, 2007, for attention; Pianta and Stuhlman, 2004, for antisocial behavior; and Fantuzzo et al., 2003, for depressive symptoms)
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From page 46... ...
Shown here are simple correlations among kindergarten entry achievement, attention and behavioral competencies, and math and reading test scores measured 2-8 years later. Correlations between later achievement and the three measures of attention, antisocial behavior, and mental health problems are similar to what was found for corresponding correlations with kindergarten achievement shown in the first column.
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From page 47... ...
Across much of the 1980s, the inflation-adjusted earnings of high school graduates plunged by 16 percent, while the earnings of college-educated workers rose by nearly 10 percent. In the following two decades, low-skill worker earnings continued to fall, while the earnings of college-educated workers continued their modest rise.6 How these occupation and education-related changes in the labor market affect the demand for cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal competencies is the subject of this section.
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From page 48... ...
Looking beyond earnings, Oreopoulos and Salvanes (2011) find that workers with higher educational attainment enjoy more nonmonetary employment advantages, including a higher sense of achievement, work in more prestigious occupations, and greater job satisfaction than comparable workers with lower levels of education.
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From page 49... ...
with occupational level, income, job performance, and job training performance. Comparing these correlations with those found in studies of the association between personality traits and job outcomes, they concluded that general cognitive ability was more important for later job success than conscientiousness or any other intrapersonal or interpersonal competency.
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From page 50... ...
show links between the mathematics tests scores of two cohorts of high school seniors and their wages at age 24. Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Competencies and Employment Outcomes In an effort to understand the large amount of variation in earnings and other employment outcomes that cannot be attributed to cognitive competencies, researchers have begun to examine the role of a variety of intrapersonal and interpersonal competencies.
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From page 51... ...
, which conducts a second-order meta-analysis of the results of 11 prior meta-analyses of the simple associations between Five Factor Model personality traits and job performance. They find that conscientiousness is a valid correlate of job performance across all performance measures studied, with average correlations ranging from the mid .20s to low .30s.
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From page 52... ...
They developed a battery of noncognitive scores focused on an antisocial construct using student anxiety, headstrongness, hyperactivity, and peer conflict to go along with cognitive test scores in this analysis. Based upon the psychological, neurological, social, and other aspects of child development, they modeled the developmental path and estimated the impact of investments in cognitive and noncognitive competencies on high school graduation and earnings (at age 23)
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From page 53... ...
In contrast, cognitive ability was a stronger correlate of wages and earnings for workers with earnings above the median. But while this body of research on intrapersonal and interpersonal competencies is growing rapidly, there is little consensus emerging from it.
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From page 54... ...
, they developed measures of the routine and nonroutine cognitive tasks and routine and nonroutine manual tasks required by various occupations. Comparing tasks over time, from 1960 to 1998, they concluded that beginning in 1970 computers reduced routine cognitive and manual tasks and increased nonroutine cognitive and interactive tasks.
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From page 55... ...
They also found evidence that youth sociability affects job assignment in adulthood, and that interpersonal interactions are consistent with the assignment model. This study built on earlier, unpublished work which suggested that technological and organizational changes have increased the importance of interpersonal competencies in the workplace (Borghans, ter Weel, and Weinberg, 2005)
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From page 56... ...
analyzed longitudinal studies that presented 65 different correlational estimates of the relationship between cognitive test scores and earnings over a 30-year period. The authors found no increase in the estimates over time, indicating that labor market demand for cognitive competencies had not grown.
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From page 57... ...
Following the studies on education and labor market outcomes, they have used externally imposed differences in compulsory schooling such as changes in compulsory attendance requirements that affect the amount of education attained. To control for genetic factors and family backgrounds, they have also compared the health of siblings who have different educational attainments.
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From page 58... ...
They find that cognitive ability is not a very important determinant of smoking decisions or obesity but that noncognitive competencies are generally more important for smoking, obesity, and self-reported health. More recently, Hauser and Palloni (2011)
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From page 59... ...
Most personality traits are not very predictive of relationship satisfaction (e.g., Gottman, 1994; Karney and Bradbury, 1995)
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. Indeed, research over four decades has demonstrated that socioeconomic status (SES)
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From page 61... ...
EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT AND TRANSFER IN THE LABOR MARKET A general theme of the evidence presented in this chapter is that measurable cognitive competencies, personality traits, and other intrapersonal and interpersonal competencies developed in childhood and adolescence are, at best, modestly predictive of adult successes, particularly labor market productivity. Cognitive ability does appear to matter and, among personality traits, so, apparently, does conscientiousness.
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From page 62... ...
and Schultz (1975) generalized this insight to suggest that investments in more educated workers had an even greater impact on a firm's ability to adapt to technological change.
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From page 63... ...
Neither Welch nor Schultz addressed which specific aspects of schooling contributed to the ability of workers to make the tacit adjustments to production that will increase productivity and profitability. It is possible that schooling develops not only cognitive competencies but also intrapersonal and interpersonal competencies that enable workers to make decisions that benefit the firm.
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From page 64... ...
This suggests that the deep task-specific competencies developed by the highly educated workers were less transferable than the shallower competencies developed by the less educated workers. Overall, the study suggests that workers are more easily able to transfer competencies developed on the job to a similar occupation, involving similar tasks, than to a dissimilar occupation.
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From page 65... ...
All three groups have investigated the relationships between cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal competencies and outcomes in adolescence and adulthood. • Conclusion: Cognitive competencies have been more extensively studied than intrapersonal and interpersonal competencies, show ing consistent, positive correlations (of modest size)
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From page 66... ...
In addition, more highly educated workers have the capacity to allocate resources more efficiently in their own work activities and in behalf of the enterprise in which they work than do workers with fewer years of schooling. • Conclusion: Educational attainment -- the number of years a per son spends in school -- strongly predicts adult earnings, and also predicts health and civic engagement.
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From page 67... ...
IMPORTANCE OF DEEPER LEARNING AND 21ST CENTURY SKILLS 67 experiments. Such research would benefit from efforts to achieve common definitions of 21st century competencies and an associ ated set of activities designed to produce valid and reliable assess ments of the various individual competencies.
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