Browsing by Author "Seppälä, Jasmin"

Goals: The purpose of this study was to examine the profiles of socio-emotional skills related to task performance among upper elementary school students. Socio-emotional skills related to task performance, such as responsibility, persistence, and self-control, were examined through the OECD framework of socio-emotional skills. The second aim was to determine how the identified profiles differ in terms of gender, socio-economic status (SES), and growth mindset. There has been no previous research on forming profiles of socio-emotional skills related to task performance and, therefore, this was the first study examining such profiles. Methods: The data used in the study was part of a survey data collected in 2019 for the OECD's socio-emotional skills study, which surveyed the socio-emotional skills of students born in the Helsinki area in 2003-2004. The participants (N=2466, 52.1% girls, 45.2% boys, 1.9% other genders, and 1.6% missing information) had an average age of 15.7 years when responding to the survey. The profiles of the dimensions of the task performance skill area were formed through a two-step cluster analysis. Differences between groups regarding the variables were studied using a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Tukey’s test was used for comparing the differences between groups. Result and conclusions: The study identified four profiles of socio-emotional skills related to task performance: High socio-emotional skills profile (33.8%), Responsible-Persistent profile (23.7%), Low socio-emotional skills profile (21.9%), and Restrained profile (20.5%). There was no statistically significant difference between the profiles in terms of gender. The highest socioeconomic background was reported by students belonging to the High socio-emotional skills profile, while the lowest socio-economic background was reported by students belonging to the Restrained profile. In terms of growth mindset, all profiles were significantly different from each other. The level of growth mindset was highest in the High socio-emotional skills profile and lowest in the Low socio-emotional skills profile. The profiles only explained 3% of the variation in a growth mindset in the sample.