Students' Social-Emotional Competency And Mathematics Academic Development: A Clustering Analysis On China

Abstract

More and more countries and regions are concerned about social-emotional competency (SEC) which help students develop positive self-emotion to promote academic and social development. The present study focused on an in-depth and meaningful understanding of different students’ social-emotional competency and mathematics academic development. Participants were 6949 grade 4 and 5 pupils in China. The cluster analysis revealed different profiles by social-emotional competency’s four sub-dimensions which measured by the Chinese version of Delaware Social-Emotional Competency Scale (DSECS-SCV). MANOVA was conducted to test whether self-confidence, mathematics anxiety, mathematics interest, achievement, teacher-student relationships, and peer relationships significantly differed across the four clusters. The cluster analysis revealed four distinct profiles: high SEC, low SEC, medium SEC (social-communication) and medium SEC (control-responsible). The high SEC profile represented scores high in self-confidence, mathematics interest, achievement, teacher-student relationships and peer relationships, but low level of mathematics anxiety. Statically significant differences in the above variables existed across high, medium and low SEC clusters. However, homogeneity in self-confidence, achievement, teacher-student relationships and peer relationships were also observed in the two medium SEC clusters. This study enables teachers to have better understanding of students’ social-emotional competence and the relationships between social-emotional competence and mathematics academic development, so that they can apply appropriate teaching strategies to different types of students in practical teaching and social emotional learning programs to effectively promote students’ academic and social development.