Abstract
The Big Five personality traits play a major role in student achievement. As such, there is consistent evidence that students that are more conscientious receive better teacher-assigned grades in secondary school. However, research often does not support the claim that students that are more conscientious similarly achieve higher scores in domain-specific standardized achievement tests. Based on the Invest-and-Accrue Model, we argue that conscientiousness explains to some extent why certain students receive better grades despite similar academic accomplishments (i.e., achieving similar scores in domain-specific standardized achievement tests). Therefore, the present study examines to what extent the relationship between student personality and teacher-assigned grades consists of direct as opposed to indirect associations (via subject-specific standardized test scores). We used a representative sample of 14,710 ninth-grade students to estimate these direct and indirect pathways in mathematics and German. Structural equation models showed that test scores explained between 8 and 11% of the variance in teacher-assigned grades in mathematics and German. The Big Five personality traits in students additionally explained between 8 and 10% of the variance in grades. Finally, the personality-grade relationship consisted of direct (0.02 | β| ≤ 0.27) and indirect associations via test scores (0.01 | β| ≤ 0.07). Conscientiousness explained discrepancies between teacher-assigned grades and students’ scores in domain-specific standardized tests to a greater extent than any of the other Big Five personality traits. Our findings suggest that students that are more conscientious may invest more effort to accomplish classroom goals, but fall short of mastery.
Highlights
Student personality, especially conscientiousness, is crucial for academic achievement in secondary school (Andersen et al, 2020; Westphal et al, 2020b)
We examined whether discrepancies between teacher-assigned grades and students’ standardized achievement scores were systematically attributable to any of the Big Five personality traits in students
For openness and teacher-assigned grades in German, we found a correlation coefficient of r = 0.18, Incremental Variance in Teacher-Assigned Grades Explained by Student Personality
Summary
Especially conscientiousness, is crucial for academic achievement in secondary school (Andersen et al, 2020; Westphal et al, 2020b). A number of studies has examined whether the Big Five personality traits in students differentially relate to different achievement outcomes, such as standardized test scores and teacher-assigned grades (Spengler et al, 2013; Tetzner et al, 2019). The most consistent relationships emerged between secondary-school students’ conscientiousness and their teacher-assigned grades (Poropat, 2009). Theoretical models, such as the Invest-and-Accrue Model (Hill and Jackson, 2016) “consider[s] the potential for similar mechanisms and pathways to link conscientiousness to life outcomes across multiple domains” While students’ conscientiousness is linked to their teacher-assigned grades across multiple domains, students’ conscientiousness is less consistently associated with scores in standardized achievement tests (e.g., Meyer et al, 2019)
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