How do the environments that children face interact with their skills to determine school success?

在中学毕业时，处境不利的学生与处境不利的同龄人之间的成绩差距正在扩大（扩大教育方案，2020年）。在全球范围内，这种情况并不罕见，尽管学校进行了大量的学术干预，但这种不平等的持续存在令人不安。作为回应，政策制定者和学术界已经开始寻找更远的解决方案。最近的专业和学术重点非认知技能就是这样一个方向，开始照亮学生的社会和情感技能的重要性，他们的学术和终身的成功。另一个是对教师评分、推荐和指导中潜在偏见的审查越来越多。然而，令人惊讶和值得注意的是，很少有人关注这两个研究领域之间的相互作用：即学生所处环境的差异如何与他们自己的特点和行为相互作用，以产生结果。这些最新研究结果对教育界的重要性怎么强调都不过分。在英国，关于成就差距的讨论仍然集中在弱势儿童的认知和非认知技能缺陷上，以及旨在“缩小”这一技能差距的干预措施上（例如，EEF，2020）。作为一名教师，我曾试图实施一些这些干预措施，并看到了来自试图“改变”弱势学生，以适应学校的要求，而不是支持学校的变化，以适应其最脆弱的学生的徒劳的结果。相反，这些文献开始回答一个关键问题，即许多学校领导和政策制定者所称赞的技能和环境-例如勤奋，数学和英语的学术重点，以及抑制冒险的行为政策-实际上通过奖励和支持只会使更多学生受益的技能来加剧现有的不平等。这样，它表明，我们必须更多地了解实际上促进弱势儿童成功的行为和能力，并适当地设计干预措施和学校。然而，需要做更多的研究，以更好地了解儿童所面临的环境如何与他们的技能相互作用，以确定学校的成功。特别是，由于不同群体的非认知和认知技能的回报可能因环境而异，因此确定Lundberg研究中明显的关联是否在英国也适用是很重要的。此外，Lundberg的论文将学术成就量化，主要作为衡量坚持性的一个指标，使用高中毕业、大学入学和大学毕业作为成功的指标。虽然这些都是重要的措施，使用考试成绩作为因变量-当控制以前的学术成就-可能会产生非常不同的结果。最后，尽管伦德伯格令人信服地使用相关结果证明了人格特质和结果之间的因果关系，但还需要更稳健的实验或准实验研究设计来估计这种因果关系是否真的存在。因此，本研究试图回答的问题是，是否有利于教育成就的特质在家庭和学校-可能还有社会-环境中存在系统性差异。我将首先研究每个“大五”人格特质与教育程度和劳动力市场结果的关联，控制包括先前教育程度在内的协变量，并允许结果因性别和社会经济地位而异。如果研究和结果允许，我将研究表明某些人格特质和结果的测量行为之间关系的潜在因果关系，再次按性别和社会经济地位区分。

The attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their more advantaged peers at the end of secondary school is growing (EPI, 2020). Globally, this is not unusual, and the persistence of such inequities despite substantial academic interventions by schools is troubling. In response, policy-makers and academics have begun to look further afield for solutions. The recent professional and academic focus on non-cognitive skills is one such direction, beginning to illuminate the importance of pupils' social and emotional skills for their academic and lifelong success. Another is the increased scrutiny of potential biases in teacher grades, recommendations, and mentoring. However, it is both surprising and noteworthy that very little focus has yet been placed on the interactions between these two areas of enquiry: namely, how differences in the environment that pupils find themselves in interact with their own characteristics and behaviours to produce outcomes.The importance of these recent research findings to the education sector cannot be over-stated. In the UK, discussions around the attainment gap remains focused on cognitive and noncognitive skills deficits of disadvantaged children, and on interventions that are intended to 'close' this skills gap (e.g. EEF, 2020). As a teacher, I have attempted to implement a number of these interventions myself and have seen the unrewarding results that come from trying to 'change' disadvantaged pupils to fit the requirements of the school, rather than the support of the school change to fit its most vulnerable pupils. Instead, this literature begins to answer the crucial question of whether the skills and environments that are lauded by many school leaders and policy makers - such as conscientiousness, academic foci on maths and English, and behaviour policies that disincentivise risk taking - actually exacerbate existing inequities by rewarding and supporting skills that only benefit more-advantaged pupils. In this way, it suggests that we must know more about the behaviour and capabilities that actually foster success for disadvantaged children and design interventions, and schools, suitably. Nonetheless more research needs to be done to better understand the how the environments that children face interact with their skills to determine school success. In particular, as the returns to noncognitive and cognitive skills for different groups is likely to differ by context, it is important to determine whether the associations that are apparent in Lundberg's research also hold true in the UK. In addition, Lundberg's paper quantifies academic attainment primarily as a measure of persistence, using high school completion, college enrolment and college completion as indicators of success. While these are important measures, using examination grades as a dependent variable - when controlling for prior academic attainment - may produce very different results. Lastly, although Lundberg convincingly make the case for causality between personality traits and outcomes using correlational results, more robust experimental or quasi-experimental research designs which estimate whether or not such a causal relationship is truly extant are needed. The present research therefore seeks to answer the question of whether traits that are conducive to educational achievement differ systematically across family and school - and possibly social - contexts. I will do this by firstly examining the association of each of the 'Big Five' personality traits with educational attainment and labour market outcomes, controlling for covariates including prior educational attainment and allowing results to differ by gender and socioeconomic status. Research and results permitting, I will then examine potential causality in the relationship between measured behaviours indicative of certain personality traits and outcomes, again differentiating by gender and socioeconomic status.