Soft Skills: Is There Also an East-West Gap?

• In Event: 42.083 - Roundtable Session 17
  In Roundtable Session: 42.083-22 - Teaching and Learning Through an International Lens

Abstract

While the importance of noncognitive skills has been well recognized for school and labor market outcomes, the research on noncognitive skills remains in its infancy, especially in international comparisons. This study investigates students’ noncognitive achievements from AUS, QCN, SGP, and USA, a spectrum of Eastern to Western cultures, via a secondary analysis of PISA 2012. Although the students have large differences in test scores, the differences on noncognitive skills are much smaller. Most between-system differences on noncognitive skills become smaller when controlling for SES, but those on cognitive achievements become lager. Much smaller proportions of variances of noncognitive scores occur at school level in all the systems than the cognitive ones. School-level variances are greater in East than West.

Authors

• Yan Zhu, East China Normal University

• Jinfa Cai, University of Delaware

• Xuemei Xia, Shanghai Academy of Education Sciences