Personality is related to educational outcomes in late adolescence: Evidence from two large-scale achievement studies
Introduction
Education is one of the most important life outcomes. In modern knowledge-based economies, the role of education has evolved into a prerequisite for a professional qualification (e.g., vocational education and training) and successful occupational careers across the lifespan. In particular, the first educational stages in primary and secondary school form the most important basis for successful life paths (see Almlund et al., 2011, Blossfeld et al., 2011, Heckman, 2006). Therefore, it is essential to understand what factors contribute to an individual’s education and how individual differences in academic outcomes can be explained (e.g., Jimerson et al., 1999, Schmidt and Hunter, 1998, Williamson et al., 1991).
It has been well established that cognitive resources such as intelligence (Gottfredson, 2002, Gustafsson and Undheim, 1996, Kuncel et al., 2004) and prior knowledge (e.g., Baumert et al., 2009, Hailikari et al., 2007) are among the best single predictors of academic success. Yet, to gain further insights into individual differences in educational outcomes, a growing body of studies have focused on the contribution of noncognitive factors (see Chamorro-Premuzic and Furnham, 2005, Steinmayr and Spinath, 2009). In particular, the link between various components of students’ achievement motivation and academic outcomes has been the subject of a large amount of educational research and seems well established for several constructs (e.g., academic self-concept and interest; see Gottschling et al., 2012, Schicke and Fagan, 1994, Spinath et al., 2010).
In addition, students’ personality has gained increasing attention for several reasons. First, personality is an important individual resource that is not only associated with important life outcomes such as subjective well-being, (mental) health (Ozer and Benet-Martínez, 2006, Roberts et al., 2007), and career success (Sutin, Costa, Miech, & Eaton, 2009), but is also supposed to play a prominent role in explaining educational attainment and academic success (e.g., Poropat, 2009). Second, as we know from a large body of studies, the development of personality is a lifelong process (e.g., Roberts et al., 2006, Roberts et al., 2008). Thus, educational processes at school during adolescence can play an important role in the development of personality by providing learning opportunities and situational demands that shape personality (see Bleidorn, 2012, Roberts and DelVecchio, 2000, Roberts et al., 2007).
To further expand the body of knowledge on noncognitive predictors of individual differences in students’ educational success, research on personality during adolescence seems particularly important. In most countries, this developmental stage coincides with the end of compulsory education when far-reaching decisions about future educational pathways (e.g., entrance into tertiary education) are made. The large majority of previous personality research that included adolescent students was based on small or medium-sized student samples, college-bound students, or college students (e.g., Caspi et al., 2005, Corker et al., 2012, O’Connor and Paunonen, 2007). Although this line of research has provided important insights, little is known about the representativeness and generalizability of these results because only a subsection of the student body has been included. To significantly further our knowledge of the link between personality and education, it is thus necessary to cover the full heterogeneity of the student population. To this end, the present study capitalized on data from several thousand adolescent students who participated in a large-scale educational assessment program. In doing so, we were able to analyze how personality is related to general and domain-specific components of students’ achievement motivation to learn about the extent of construct overlap. Moreover, we rigorously examined the role of personality in educational outcomes (i.e., grades and achievement tests).
Section snippets
Personality in (late) adolescence
A wide range of studies on personality have identified individual differences in five broad and distinguishable domains across the life span (Roberts and Jackson, 2008, Robins et al., 2001, Soto et al., 2008): Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness—resulting in the Five Factor Model (FFM) of personality (McCrae & Costa, 1987). Rank-order stability and (mean-level) change as well as the factor structure of personality have been well established by a broad range
Personality and academic achievement
It is very plausible that personality traits play an important role in learning and education (De Raad & Schouwenburg, 1996) although they were not explicitly constructed to predict academic outcomes (Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997). To account for the personality-performance relation, Caspi and colleagues have suggested several (causal) pathways (Caspi et al., 2005; see also De Raad and Schouwenburg, 1996, Roberts, 2006). Most relevant for the developmental transition during adolescence is the
(Other) established predictors of achievement and their relation to personality
There is a large body of educational research that has analyzed cognitive and noncognitive predictors of academic success. One group of studies has concentrated on intelligence, showing that students with a high level of intelligence achieve better academic outcomes (Gottfredson, 2002, Gustafsson and Undheim, 1996, Kuncel et al., 2004). A second group of studies has focused on a large variety of motivational constructs (see Steinmayr and Spinath, 2009, Winne and Nesbit, 2010). The most
The present study
The major aim of the present study was to further the empirical body of knowledge on the role of personality in education and learning. More specifically, we tackled a key question in personality research by means of two steps. First, we determined the overlap of personality with the other predictors of academic achievement (achievement motivation (specific and general self-concepts), anxiety, interest, and intelligence). In the present investigation, we expected different correlational
Samples
The present study capitalized on the Luxembourgish extension of the year 2009 cycle of the PISA study (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2001), which encompassed two components: (a) one national component and (b) one international component. To this end, data from two (nonoverlapping) student samples were obtained.
Sample S1. S1 was a representative sample of 15-year-old students whose data were used for international comparison within the PISA cycle in 2009 (Boehm
Structure of personality4
Table 1 shows the (manifest) item correlations for S1 (upper triangle) and for S2 (lower triangle). Considering the convergent and discriminant correlations provides a first hint about whether the structure is reflected in the correlational pattern. For S1 and S2, the corresponding items showed the highest correlations (convergent correlations).
In a next step, we computed a principal component analysis with an oblimin rotation. The eigenvalues of the unrotated version in each analysis supported
Discussion
Drawing on two large samples of adolescent students the major aim of the present study was to further the empirical body of knowledge on the role of personality in education and learning. To this end, we tackled two key questions in personality research. First, we determined the overlap of personality with other predictors of academic achievement. Second, we examined the incremental validity of personality to general and domain-specific indicators of academic success over and above those
Conclusion
We demonstrated the importance of personality in explaining educational outcomes. In particular, we showed that large-scale educational studies provide a useful context in which to address research questions concerning the validity of personality traits because they provide a large representative database covering the full heterogeneity of the student body with different important predictive variables and domain-specific and general academic outcomes. We therefore encourage the responsible
Acknowledgments
This study was supported by a grant from the Luxembourgish Fonds National de la Recherche (PELEDU – Personality in Learning and Education, Project No. C11/LM/1168993).
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