Predicting student success: Considering social and emotional skills, growth mindset, and motivation

A growing body of evidence has found that social and emotional (SE) skills are positively associated with many school-related outcomes. In recent years, the Big Five personality framework has gained support as an organizing framework for various SE skills. While many prominent taxonomies of SE skills map to the Big Five, several additional models include skills related to motivation and growth mindset that do not align with the Big Five. We examined the extent to which these constructs overlapped with SE skills organized by the Big Five framework and whether they provided incremental validity in predicting school-related outcomes. ACT test takers (N = 1755) from across the United States, mostly from high-income families and predominantly in 11th or 12th grade, completed several measures. These included a measure of SE skills as organized by the Big Five (i.e., BFI-2-S), items on school-related outcomes, measures of motivation (i.e., MSLQ, Expectancy-Value-Cost Scale, Self-Determination Scale), and a measure of growth mindset (i.e., the Growth Mindset Scale). We found that growth mindset and motivation correlated with SE skills as organized by the Big Five. These constructs also helped predict additional variance in school-related outcomes, such as GPA and ACT scores. Given the independent contributions of growth mindset and motivation, incorporating these constructs into school-based assessments, alongside SE skills, could be beneficial in supporting students.