Behavioral Skills

Behaviors are valued across cultures and are often embedded in folktales and fables (e.g., “The Little  Engine That Could,” “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” “The Tortoise and the Hare”) as a way to illustrate  that some behaviors lead to rewards while others lead to negative consequences. In fact, much of early childhood education focuses on shaping students’ behavior by modeling appropriate behavioral skills, such as waiting one’s turn, communicating one’s needs, sharing toys and school supplies, as opposed to the more traditional academic subjects emphasized in later grades. However, as  students progress developmentally, conveying academic content (e.g., mathematics) is generally  viewed as the primary responsibility of the educational system, and the role of teachers and schools  in guiding behaviors is not as clear. Attendance, punctuality, conduct, effort, and responsibility are acknowledged as important factors in many grading systems (Camara, Kimmel, Scheuneman, & Sawtell, 2003), and negative behaviors often result in disciplinary actions that impact educational and learning outcomes. However, behavioral skills are not codified in a systematic fashion the way academic skills are. Despite the fact that most states have developed behavioral standards for students, these standards lack definitional clarity, are overly general, are not research based, and do not include a developmental progression mirroring the learning progressions or content standards of traditional subject areas like mathematics and English. Yet there is a preponderance of research that attests to the importance of behavior in predicting and explaining performance in education (e.g., McAbee, Oswald, & Connelly, in press; Poropat, 2009) and work settings (Barrick & Mount, 1991; Viswesvaran, Ones & Schmidt, 1996), as well as in serving as an important driver of elements of economic growth, such as employee wages (e.g., Heckman, Stixrud, & Urzua, 2006; Lleras, 2008).

In this section, we articulate the framework and taxonomy of behavioral skills that are included in the ACT holistic model of education and work readiness. We outline a general conceptual model of behavior, its foundations, and the research evidence that supports the constructs included across critical transition points along the K–Career continuum. We use “behavior” as an overarching term  that includes psychosocial factors, socioemotional learning, character, personal and soft skills, and  similar terms that tap the same content and are common in both the scientific literature and popular  press (for an illustration of how these terms overlap conceptually, see Tooley & Bornfreund, 2014).