GAC031课程疗效：来自中国和墨西哥的证据

Jill McVey and Kristen Phipps Introduction The Global Assessment Certificate (GAC) is a university-preparation program that equipsinternational students with the academic knowledge, skills,and confidence to thrive inan English-speaking bachelor’s degree program (ACT, 2026). Through a structured and holisticcurriculum, students build competencies in academic English, mathematics, science, business,social sciences, computing, communication skills, and ACT test preparation. In addition,students can earn undergraduate college credit at participating universities, as recommendedby the American Council on Education (ACE; American Council on Education, 2026). One of GAC’srecent additions is the GAC031 course, which was added in 2022. This course isdesigned to strengthen essential skills, often referred to as noncognitive, interpersonal, or 21st-century skills. These are interpersonal, self-regulatory, and task-related behaviors important foracademic and workplace success (Camara et al., 2015). Essential skills differ from intelligenceand traditional cognitive skills, and decades of research have shown them to be important at alllevels of schooling (Durlak et al., 2022; Mammadov, 2022; Robbins et al., 2004), in theworkforce (Pletzer & Abrahams, 2025; Young et al., 2018), and for desirable outcomesthroughout a person’s life, such as life satisfaction and wellbeing (Anglim et al., 2020;Strickhouser et al., 2017). About the Course This course focuses on six core competencies: Sustaining Effort, Getting Along with Others,Maintaining Composure, Keeping an Open Mind, Social Connection, and Acting Honestly. SeeAppendix A for definitions of each competency. Throughout this course, students learn theseskills through explicit instruction and deliberate practice. As students learn strategies to build their own skills, they also engage with relatable casestudies featuring fictional teens. Students offer advice to help the teen characters overcomechallenges and move toward their goals before applying these strategies to their own lives. Forexample, Ahmed is a high school student who sometimes struggles with self-confidence. Hehas a harsh inner critic and is learning a strategy to rebut and reframe these negative thoughts.Students are asked to provide rebuttals toAhmed’s inner critic by imagining they aregoodfriends of his. What would they say to him if they heard him saying these things to himself?Next, they are asked to think about their own inner critics and develop rebuttals to thosenegative thoughts. This scaffolded practice is paired with a real-world project-based learning experience in whichstudents collaborate to answer the driving question “How can we, as a community of students,positively impact our school culture?” As part of the course, teams of students (in groups ofthree to five) determine areas of their school culture that could be improved. Throughout thecourse, students develop and implement a product that will ultimately be shared with otherstakeholders. For example, students could decide to create an “art hallway” to beautify theirschool and showcase student creativity. They would then need to create a plan, get feedbackfrom students and staff, and ultimately present their process and results to stakeholders. Bydesigning and presenting original products, students apply essential skill competencies inauthentic contexts, strengthening their communication, problem-solving, and collaboration skills. The learning outcomes emphasize understanding the role of essential skills in school, work, andpersonal life; applying and evaluating strategies for growth; collaborating to improve schoolcommunities; and reflecting on areas of progress and continued development. Ultimately,GAC031 provides multiple opportunities for students to explore how essential skills canenhance their relationships, increase their efficiency, and support meaningful teamwork. In 2025, GAC031received ACE’s credit recommendation. As students develop their essentialskills, they can also earn three lower-division baccalaureate credits, which may be appliedtoward an introductory teaching and learning course at many institutions. ACE evaluatorshighlighted that the course’s learning outcomes, content, and assessments align with standardsfound in similar university-level courses. To evaluate the rigor of the course learning objectives,ACE evaluators appliedBloom’staxonomy, a hierarchal framework used to classify thecognitive complexity of learning activities, objectives, and assessments (Adams, 2015). Theevaluators determined that the rigor of the GAC031 assessments reflects learning at thefoundational levels of Bloom’staxonomy, Remember and Understand. As learners recall andrecognize key information and explain essential skill concepts in their own words through team-based projects and reflective essays, they demonstrate learning at these foundational levels ofrigor, building readiness for future academic challenges. By integrating essential sk