Habilidades cognitivas e não cognitivas: um estudo da educação básica no Brasil

Abstract

Basic Education in Brazil is made up of three stages of education, Early Childhood Education, Elementary Education and High School. At each stage, the influence of different factors intervening in the performance and educational trajectory of individuals is verified. The literature recognizes that both cognitive and non-cognitive skills and socioeconomic factors interfere in different ways throughout the teaching stages. The formation of individuals' skills begins in the intrauterine period and occurs throughout life. However, the formation of cognitive skills has a fundamental period to be developed, which corresponds to early childhood, from zero to five years of age. Non-cognitive skills, on the other hand, being more malleable, can be developed in later stages such as adolescence and adult life. In this sense, the literature recognizes the relevance of these skills not only on the educational result, but also on the formation of cognitive skills. Particularly in elementary school, the age group corresponding to pre-adolescence and adolescence, socio-emotional skills can have a significant impact on the transition between educational cycles. This thesis aims to investigate the impact of cognitive and non-cognitive skills on the trajectory and school performance of individuals. Therefore, this work is divided into two essays. The first essay aims to analyze whether access to early childhood education in Brazil has an impact on the permanence and completion of other stages of public education. As cognitive skills have their most critical training period in early childhood, early childhood education becomes the stage that will provide the development of important skills for all other stages of education. For this article, data from the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) from 2001 to 2015 will be used. The methodology consists of building a pseudo panel using the Age-Period-Cohort method, the cohorts were formed by individuals born between 1995 and 2001. The results confirm the relevance of early childhood education for the completion of other school cycles. The second essay aims to identify how socio-emotional characteristics impact school performance in elementary school. To measure socio-emotional skills, the SENNA instrument was applied to students in the 9th grade of elementary school in the municipal network of the municipality of Pojuca/BA. The Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) method and Quantile Regressions were used as methodology. The results corroborate existing empirical works, confirming the importance of non-cognitive skills for individuals' school performance.