Social Skills and School Performance in Portuguese and Mathematics in Elementary School Students

Abstract

In this study, the relations between social skills and academic performance were studied. We posed associations between social skills and performance in writing and mathematics as well as between conversational skills and these two academic performance measures in girls. In boys we posed associations between assertiveness and academic performance in the two areas. Participants were 196 elementary school children from two schools in the state of São Paulo, with ages ranging 8-10 years, 52% females were evaluated by means of the Test of Social Skills in Children and Adolescents in school situation (THAS-C) and Test of academic performance in writing and maths. The results pointed out that greater social skills tend to be achieved in later schooling years and appear to facilitate performance in different areas of academic performance. In this sense, we suggest that the behaviors are associated with specifi c diffi culties in writing and mathematics, and that the course of these associations varies within sex and age. Furthermore, is indicated the importance of the evaluation of social skills in the academic context given the associated educational connections.Keywords: Academic assessment, school performance, social skills. Habilidades Sociais e Desempenho Escolar em Português e Matemática em Estudantes do Ensino Fundamental ResumoNo presente trabalho verifi cou-se a relação das habilidades sociais e desempenho escolar em diferentes anos escolares e por sexo, visando fornecer evidências de validade para o Teste de Habilidades Sociais em Crianças e Adolescentes em situação escolar (THAS-C

Development of language and arithmetic skills: risk and protective factors. Comparative cross-sectional study

“…28,29 A piece of research demonstrated that the ability to write to dictation is positively correlated with civility and altruism skills; assertiveness, in turn, was correlated with arithmetic skills. 29 An intervention study demonstrated that children who had received an intervention to train their social skills improved in this area and in academic skills as well. In contrast, children who had received reading and writing interventions only improved in that educational area.…”