Live Poster Session: Zoom Link
Abstract: Social emotional learning has emerged as a potential future for the field of education over the past two decades and could have an increased impact in promoting academic achievement during and post the COVID-19 pandemic. Optimism overlaps greatly with measures of social emotional learning and could serve as a further insight into the importance of non-cognitive skills and mindset on academic performance. There is a positive correlation between adolescent optimism and academic achievement (Tetzner & Becker, 2018). However, there are limited longitudinal studies on achievement factors predicting adult dispositional optimism. This research attempts to fill in this gap using Wave I and Wave 5 of National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health. Adolescents in grades 7 to 12 were surveyed and interviewed in Wave I, the same participants were surveyed as adults in Wave V. Using Add Health, this research aims to determine if there is a relationship between academic achievement and adolescent optimism as well as if this relationship changes when considering adult optimism.
An Analysis of Variance test revealed that participants with lower reported levels of adolescent optimism had significantly lower GPAs. In addition, basedĀ onĀ aĀ Pearson Correlation test,Ā there was a significant, but weak correlation between adolescent academic achievement and adult optimism. These relationships remained significant even when considering biological sex, school attendance, social ability, income, and depression.
Goss-Poster