United States – A child may not necessarily be determined how smart he or she is as a solution to scholarly achievement, a recent study carried out in Britain reveals.
In fact, intelligence combined with what leaders had recently begun calling ‘noncognitive skills,’ things like getting good grades at school when one wanted it and having a natural curiosity, can move a child up to the highest ranking in the class, according to genetic evidence, as reported by HealthDay.
The Role of Non-Cognitive Skills
“Our research challenges the long-held assumption that intelligence is the primary driver of academic achievement,” said study co-lead author Dr. Margherita Malanchini.
“We’ve found compelling evidence that non-cognitive skills — such as grit, perseverance, academic interest and value attributed to learning — are not only significant predictors of success, but that their influence grows stronger over time,” added Malanchini, a senior lecturer in psychology at Queen Mary University of London.
She and co-lead study author Dr Andrea Allegrini of University College London released the findings of their research on Aug 26 in Nature Human Behavior.
Genetic Evidence Supports the Findings
The new study sample comprised more than 10,000 British children, whose performance was followed starting from ages 7 to 16. At the same time, the London researchers have also looked at each child’s genome in order to identify genes that are believed to influence other non-ability profiles.
The team also contrasted outcomes in akin and diversalist twin groups and focused on how genetic similarities may affect academic performance.
They combined the data to formulate a “polygenic” score of the school performance potential of each child.
“We discovered that genetic effects associated with non-cognitive skills become increasingly predictive of academic achievement over the school years; in fact, their effect nearly doubles between the ages of 7 and 16,” Allegrini, a research fellow at University College London, said in a Queen Mary news release. “By the end of compulsory education, genetic dispositions towards non-cognitive skills were equally as important as those related to cognitive abilities in predicting academic success.”
Implications for Education
In other words, intelligence alone isn’t always enough to excel. Of course, drive, curiosity, and other character traits are just as significant to academic performance.
Part of that can be explained genetically, but some of it has to do with the home or school environment, the researchers found. The study of the twins supported that conception to an extent.
“We found that while family-wide processes play a significant role, the increasing influence of non-cognitive genetics on academic achievement remained evident even within families,” Allegrini explained. “This suggests that children may actively shape their own learning experiences based on their personality, dispositions, and abilities, creating a feedback loop that reinforces their strengths.”
A Call for Educational Reform
The new studies imply that increasing children’s grades is not only about their intelligence, which schools aim to enhance, as reported by HealthDay.
“Our education system has traditionally focused on cognitive development,” Malanchini said. “It’s time to rebalance that focus and give equal importance to nurturing non-cognitive skills. By doing so, we can create a more inclusive and effective learning environment for all students.”