Investigating the differential relationship between the big five domains of social and emotional skills and mathematics achievement using OECD's SSES

Abstract

The goal of the study is to investigate the differential relationship between the social and emotional skills measured by the “big five” skill domains and mathematics achievement for socioeconomic status, gender, and level of SEL evaluation groups. For this purpose, the study used the OECD 2019 Survey data on social-emotional skills from Turkey. The OECD conceptual framework combines and integrates skills from different applied frameworks (Kankaraš & Suarez-Alvarez, 2019). Big five model of social and emotional skills consists of task performance, emotional regulation, engaging with others, collaboration, and open-mindedness (Kankaraš & Suarez-Alvarez, 2019). In the current study, the participants are 9th grade, 10th grade, and 11th grade students in Istanbul, Turkey. The results indicated that 8% of the variance in mathematics achievement ({u1D445}2=0.077) was explained by the social andemotional skills domains, especially with open mindedness, emotional regulation and engaging with other domains. Also, there is a differential relationship between mathematics achievement and social and emotional skills for boys and girls. The relationship between social and emotional skills and mathematics achievement is stronger for girls ({u1D445}2=0.092)than boys ({u1D445}2=0.056). On the other hand, the results showed that while for low level SESstudents this model explains 13% of the variance in mathematics achievement ({u1D445}2=0.130),for medium level SES students, it explains 9% of the variance in mathematics achievement ({u1D445}2=0. 091). Furthermore, for high level SES group, the model explains 6% of the variancein mathematics achievement ({u1D445}2=0. 056). Therefore, it can be stated that there is differentialrelationship between social and emotional skills and mathematics achievement for different levels of SES. Lastly, there is a differential relationship between the five domains SSES model and mathematics achievement for non- evaluated ({u1D445}2= 0.062), informally evaluated({u1D445}2=0. 080) and formally evaluated ({u1D445}2=0.091) SEL groups. Overall, the findings suggestthat grouping variables need to be taken into consideration to understand the relationship between the mathematics achievement and emotional skills.