Examples Of Non-Academic Outcomes

Non-academic Outcomes

Teachers not only focus more than just students’ academic outcome, but also generic skills, positive attitudes and values. More and more emphasis is put on non-academic aspects of education, which are perceived as the important elements in children’s development. In a reform proposal for the education system in Hong Kong in 2000, ethics, physique, social skills and aesthetics are also the domains to achieve all-round developments in students (Education Commission, 2000). It aimed to develop students’ critical thinking as well as positive attitudes and values such as confidence and collective efficacy. The ability to communicate and perform team work are examples of generic skills. Teachers would deliver the skills and

There is a collective responsibility for all students in the group to contribute to reach common goal and collective efficacy is the belief of such responsibility (Cheng et al., 2008). Every students would strive to do their part in order to receive the outcomes and avoid holding back the whole group. To facilitate learning, students can develop social skills when participating in group activities (Cheng et al., 2008). Students would interact, make decisions together, and manage conflicts in group tasks. Despite different levels of ability, students can construct ideas together and strategies in problem solving can be internalised (Wilkinson et al., 2000). Nevertheless, if teachers do not encourage learning from group tasks, students may not have the chance to learn these skills. As a result, group activities in class can establish student’s collective efficacy and social skills if opportunities to perform group tasks are

Nevertheless, in most cases ability grouping is regarded as establishing social stratification, maintaining equality, and targeting to develop students human capital in the public.

A rigid choice between homogeneous grouping and heterogeneous grouping cannot solve all educational problems of all students. Students naturally have different ability in different subject areas. Allocating them to learn with certain group of classmates by this criteria may not fit students the best. Grouping can have far-reaching effects on students learning and thus careful decisions should be made. More than just, flexibility should be allowed in ability grouping so that the need of different students could be catered. For example, it is suggested that the high-achieving and low-achieving homogeneous groups can interact occasionally so that students are able to learn from each other and acquire non-academic skills. In this way, a more positive image of ability grouping and education can be created in