How does teaching pedagogy affect students’ non-cognitive skills

As an emerging teaching approach, group discussion is considered a strategy to promote students’ active involvement in the study. However, less is known about whether it is helpful for student skill formation. Using data on secondary school students and their teachers, we examine the effects of two pedagogies, namely, teaching in lectures and discussing in groups on students’ non-cognitive skills. We find that exposure to a high frequency of discussion in group pedagogy significantly lowers students’ psychological status, social skills, and adaptability, whereas the traditional teaching in the lecture approach has no effect. We show that the above negative effect is driven by students with low-educated parents, who are less likely to spend time with children, tutor children’s learning, and supervise children’s activities at home. Our results highlight that discussion in group pedagogy is not suitable for all students; its effect highly depends on parental inputs and parenting style.