Abstract
As academic achievement can have a major impact on the development of social inequalities we set out to explore how performance differences arise. Using data of the German twin study TwinLife, genetic and environmental effects on school grades in mathematics, German and the grade point average in two age cohorts (11 and 17 years old) were identified. Structural equation modelling on the data of 432 monozygotic and 529 dizygotic twin pairs as well as 317 siblings of the twins showed substantial genetic effects (up to 62%) in both cohorts on all three variables. Next to genetic influences, the twin-specific environment as well as non-shared environmental influences were found to explain the interindividual differences in mathematics and German as well as the grade point average. A cohort effect showing itself in higher heritability in the older cohort was found for mathematics and the grade point average but not for German. Moreover, we compared twins who were assigned to the same classroom to those twins who were assigned to different classrooms and found lower effects of the twin-specific shared environment in the latter group. Our study thereby contributes to the understanding of the etiology of interindividual differences in academic achievement in the numeracy and literacy domain in two age cohorts.
Highlights
Academic achievement is an important predictor of social success
Climate, and the teacher-student relationship, the teachers themselves, the feedback they give as well as their teaching strategy, supportive parenting and socioeconomic status [10, 13,14,15]. These results show that academic achievement is interconnected with a number of constructs which are all influenced by both, genes and the environment to varying degrees [16,17,18,19,20]
In this study we used a twin sibling design to get a deeper insight into the etiology of interindividual differences in school grades
Summary
Academic achievement is an important predictor of social success. It is connected to people’s job career, their socioeconomic status and psychological health [1,2,3] and can have a major impact on the development of social inequalities.Previous research has identified several cognitive factors that correlate with academic achievement. Working memory was confirmed to relate to academic achievement [4, 5]. To IQ and working memory, there non-cognitive factors that are substantially correlated with academic achievement. These factors include the personality trait conscientiousness, the academic self-concept of students, their self-esteem, confidence, and their motivation [6,7,8,9,10,11,12]. There are several factors usually considered as external that influence academic achievement. They include the type of school, the class
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