Investigating Early Primary School Big Fish Little Pond Effects Using Multilevel Latent Variable Models

• In Event: 18.071 - Roundtable Session 5
  In Roundtable Session: 18.071-2 - School Effectiveness and School Improvement SIG Roundtable Session

Abstract

In our study we verified the Big-Fish-Little-Pond-Effect (BFLPE) with a large sample of English primary years one to four students that comprised of mathematics achievement and self-concept measures. Multilevel latent variable models were incorporated; BFLPE estimates were found to be more negative once measurement error was adjusted for (Study 1). The present investigation is a response to an earlier school effectiveness study that found negative contextual effects associated with school average achievement with the same data. Using mediation analysis we demonstrated this “paradoxical” finding could, in part, be interpreted as a BFLPE (Study 2). Our study informs research and practice, bridging the BFLPE paradigm with school effectiveness literature concerned with the effects of school context on students’ achievement.

Authors

• Ioulia Televantou, University of Cyprus

• Herbert W. Marsh, Australian Catholic University