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Academic Achievement: What Matters? Insights from Longitudinal, Multi-Cohort, Genetically-Informative Investigations

Wed, April 7, 2:45 to 4:15pm EDT (2:45 to 4:15pm EDT), Virtual

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Understanding the key determinants of variation in academic achievement is necessary in order to take crucial steps towards supporting at-risk students. While decades of research focused on cognitive abilities in predicting academic achievement, we argue that focusing research efforts on better understanding 1) preventive factors such as parenting and experiences at school, and 2) non-cognitive factors such as motivation, personality, and socioemotional competencies, are two ways that could help researchers reach this goal. This symposium brings together the latest findings from multidisciplinary research on key determinants of academic achievement using longitudinal, cross-cultural and genetically-informative designs. The first study draws on data from 20,000 mothers and fathers to explore how parents’ education-associated genetics are related to change in parental investment and children’s educational attainment across development. The second study examines the etiology and associations between educational experiences and developmental psychopathology (e.g., anxiety related to schoolwork and exam performance) across adolescence and emerging adulthood. The third study examines the link between motivational aspects (interest) and achievement (knowledge in science) at different levels of family and national resources using data from PISA. The fourth study investigates the contributions of noncognitive characteristics to variation in academic achievement at several stages during compulsory education, using a genetic and genomic approaches. The discussion will focus on connecting these strong evidence-based results with practical implications. This symposium also shows the many ways in which multivariate, multi-method and cross-cultural approaches contribute to progress in understanding the sources of variance in academic achievement.

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