Brooke Stafford-Brizard, an adviser for Turnaround for Children, recently created a student-development framework for nonacademic skills. Building Blocks for Learning is grounded in the concept that, like academic skills, nonacademic skills are developmental and can be taught.
This resource serves to guide practitioners at all levels, informing teacher-student relationships, classroom instruction, and school design. Policymakers at the district and state levels can apply the framework when managing opportunities and requirements for students’ nonacademic development. In order to use this resource effectively, educators should keep the following suggestions in mind:
- View nonacademic skills through a developmental lens with the understanding that they must be nurtured by the same explicit teaching, modeling, support, and opportunities given to academic skills;
- Place an emphasis on the key roles that students’ environments and relationships play in the development of nonacademic skills;
- Use rigorous criteria to identify appropriate nonacademic skills to prioritize, including evidence that they are teachable and correlate to academic achievement; and
- Recognize that a focus on foundational nonacademic skills, such as self-regulation and relationship-building, will help to support the development of other skills, such as resiliency and agency.
Turnaround for Children is an organization that uses neuroscientific research to develop tools for academic improvement in high-poverty schools.
For more, see http://www.turnaroundusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Turnaround-for-Children-Building-Blocks-for-Learningx-2.pdf
