Publication: Developing Social-Emotional Skills for the Labor Market : The PRACTICE Model
Date
2014-11
ISSN
Published
2014-11
Author(s)
Abstract
Although there is a general agreement in
the literature of the importance of social-emotional skills
for labor market success, there is little consensus on the
specific skills that should be acquired or how and when to
teach them. The psychology, economics, policy research, and
program implementation literatures all touch on these
issues, but they are not sufficiently integrated to provide
policy direction. The objective of this paper is to provide
a coherent framework and related policies and programs that
bridge the psychology, economics, and education literature,
specifically that related to skills employers value,
non-cognitive skills that predict positive labor market
outcomes, and skills targeted by psycho-educational
prevention and intervention programs. The paper uses as its
base a list of social-emotional skills that employers value,
classifies these into eight subgroups (summarized by
PRACTICE), then uses the psychology literature -- drawing
from the concepts of psycho-social and neuro-biological
readiness and age-appropriate contexts -- to map the age and
context in which each skill subset is developed. The paper
uses examples of successful interventions to illustrate the
pedagogical process. The paper concludes that the
social-emotional skills employers value can be effectively
taught when aligned with the optimal stage for each skill
development, middle childhood is the optimal stage for
development of PRACTICE skills, and a broad international
evidence base on effective program interventions at the
right stage can guide policy makers to incorporate
social-emotional learning into their school curriculum.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Guerra, Nancy; Modecki, Kathryn; Cunningham, Wendy. 2014. Developing Social-Emotional Skills for the Labor Market : The PRACTICE Model. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 7123. © World Bank Group, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/20643 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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