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

孩子们面临的环境如何与他们的技能相互作用来决定学校的成功？

• 批准号: 2609995
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Essex
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2021 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2609995
• 关键词: How; do; environments; children; face

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.

在中学毕业时，处境不利的学生与条件较好的同龄人之间的成绩差距正在扩大（EPI, 2020）。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，但这种不平等现象的持续存在令人不安。作为回应，政策制定者和学者已经开始在更远的地方寻找解决方案。最近专业和学术对非认知技能的关注就是这样一个方向，开始阐明学生的社交和情感技能对他们的学业和终身成功的重要性。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，学生发现自己所处的环境差异如何与他们自己的特征和行为相互作用，从而产生结果。这些最近的研究成果对教育部门的重要性怎么强调都不为过。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，我曾尝试过实施一些这样的干预措施，并看到了试图“改变”弱势学生以适应学校的要求，而不是支持学校改变以适应最弱势学生的无益结果。相反，这些文献开始回答一个至关重要的问题，即许多学校领导和政策制定者称赞的技能和环境——比如责任心、对数学和英语的学术关注，以及抑制冒险的行为政策——是否实际上通过奖励和支持只有利于优势学生的技能而加剧了现有的不平等。通过这种方式，它表明我们必须更多地了解真正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。尽管如此，还需要做更多的研究，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，从而决定他们在学校的成功。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，因此确定伦德伯格研究中明显的关联是否也适用于英国是很重要的。此外，伦德伯格的论文主要将学业成就量化为一种衡量持久性的指标，将高中毕业率、大学入学率和大学毕业率作为成功的指标。虽然这些都是重要的衡量标准，但在控制先前的学术成就时，将考试成绩作为一个因变量可能会产生非常不同的结果。最后，尽管Lundberg使用相关结果令人信服地证明了人格特质和结果之间的因果关系，但还需要更可靠的实验或准实验研究设计来估计这种因果关系是否真正存在。因此，目前的研究试图回答这样一个问题，即有助于教育成就的特质是否在家庭和学校（可能还有社会）背景下存在系统性差异。为此，我将首先检查“五大”人格特征与受教育程度和劳动力市场结果的关联，控制包括先前受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。在研究和结果允许的情况下，我将研究表明某些人格特征和结果的测量行为之间的潜在因果关系，再次根据性别和社会经济地位进行区分。