Navigation auf uzh.ch
Navigation auf uzh.ch
Should economists deal with development issues? Definitely, says Ulf Zölitz, Associate Professor of Economics of Child and Youth Development. He investigates the key players in the lives of adolescents: school, peers, and parents. His research findings are directly incorporated into his teaching.
Text by Victoria Watts
Students of economics in their very first semester at the University of Zurich (UZH) attend a lecture entitled Microeconomics 1, which is well timed as it is held by Ulf Zölitz, Professor of the Economics of Child and Youth Development in the Department of Economics and at the Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development. The 38-year-old investigates, among other things, how to improve the development of adolescents.
Serious learning for most children begins in elementary school, where teachers create an environment in which they can acquire the basics. If several children in a class are disruptive or have trouble with authority, classroom management can take up a considerable amount of teaching time.
Learning success through social skills
Looking for ways to create an atmosphere conducive to learning, the Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS) program was implemented as part of a pilot project in 28 classes across Zurich between 2004 and 2006 and was academically monitored by UZH researchers.
Emotional skills were taught to second-year pupils for one lesson per week. These skills included self-worth, self-control, relationship building, rules, and organizational, problem-solving and learning strategies.
“The project has virtually taken on a life of its own thanks to recommendations from teachers. To date, around 60,000 pupils in Switzerland have participated in these learning units,” says Ulf Zölitz, who joined the project a few years ago. “Even before the research findings were presented, many teachers decided to keep the lessons once the project was completed.”
Classes that received the training were more focused during lessons, and pupils were more likely to attend school. “The children don’t become cleverer as a result of this intervention, but they can make more of their potential because they have mastered the additional soft skills,” is how Ulf Zölitz summarizes the key impact of the intervention.
What sets PATHS apart from other school-based interventions is that the program is aimed not only at particularly high-achieving or low-achieving children but at everyone. This is especially beneficial for children in the middle performance range, who can make better use of their other abilities thanks to the training of their social and emotional skills.
“Social and emotional skills are just as important as math or German,” says Ulf Zölitz, “and should be part of the curriculum. These lessons not only benefit individual children, they also improve the atmosphere in the classroom, which helps all children.”
Whether teachers also benefit from the program in the sense that they are less likely to switch jobs or suffer from burnout has not been investigated. However, anecdotal evidence points in this direction, and teachers have confirmed that this intervention reduces stress levels in the classroom.
Read the complete article here (in German) (PDF, 4 MB)
____________________________________________________________________________________
.png)