How You Behave in School Predicts Life Success Above and Beyond Family Background, Broad Traits, and Cognitive Ability is the title of a brand-new study that is happily not behind a paywall.

It’s a longitudinal study following participants over fifty years, says it controls for parent income and for IQ, and finds that “being a responsible student, maintaining an interest in school and having good reading and writing skills…could also be predictors of educational and occupational success decades later.”

Here’s another excerpt:

Duh, you might say.

And you might very well be right.

However, I’ve generally found that students tend to listen at least a bit more seriously when I share the results of factual research than when I say something that they can more easily dismiss as teacher “preachy stuff.”

I’m thinking it’s worth at least developing into a short read aloud.

It can never hurt to share ideas about possible actions students can take that are within their control.

What do you think?

I’m adding this info to Best Posts On “Motivating” Students.