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The relationship between students' subject-specific academic self-concept and their academic achievement is one of the most widely researched topics in educational psychology. A large proportion of this research has considered cross-lagged panel models (CLPMs), oftentimes synonymously referred to as reciprocal effects models (REMs), as the gold standard for investigating the causal relationships between the two variables and has reported evidence of a reciprocal relationship between self-concept and achievement. However, more recent methodological research has questioned the plausibility of assumptions that need to be satisfied in order to interpret results from traditional CLPMs causally. In this substantive-methodological synergy, we aimed to contrast traditional and more recently developed methods to investigate reciprocal effects of students' academic self-concept and achievement. Specifically, we compared results from CLPMs, full-forward CLPMs (FF-CLPMs), and random intercept CLPMs (RI-CLPMs) with two weighting approaches developed to study causal effects of continuous treatment variables. To estimate these different models, we used rich longitudinal data of N = 3757 students from lower secondary schools in Germany. Results from CLPMs, FF-CLPMs, and weighting methods supported the reciprocal effects model, particularly when math self-concept and grades were considered. Results from the RI-CLPMs were less consistent. Implications from our study for the interpretation of effects from the different models and methods as well as for school motivation theory are discussed.

Students' academic achievement is a key predictor of various life outcomes and is commonly used for selection as well as for educational monitoring and accountability. With regard to achievement indicators, a differentiation has traditionally been drawn between grades and standardized tests. There is initial, albeit inconclusive, evidence that these indicators might differentially reflect students' personality as encapsulated in the Big Five personality traits as well as measures of cognitive abilities. In this article, we propose the personality-achievement saturation hypothesis (PASH) as an overarching model that describes the association between achievement indicators and personality. The PASH suggests that the differentiation between grades and tests is too simplistic and that associations between personality and achievement instead vary across five main features of the achievement measures that are used: level of standardization, relevance for the student, curricular validity, instructional sensitivity, and cognitive ability saturation. On the basis of findings from prior studies, we focused in particular on conscientiousness and openness to test the PASH. We used data from three large-scale studies (total N = 14,953) and aggregated our findings across these studies. In line with the PASH, the Big Five trait of conscientiousness was most strongly related to measures that were less standardized and less saturated with cognitive ability but higher on curriculum validity, relevance, and instructional sensitivity. In addition, openness was most strongly related to measures that were higher on standardization and cognitive ability saturation but lower on relevance, curriculum validity, and instructional sensitivity in English.

Equally able students have lower academic self-concept in high achieving schools or classes, a phenomenon known as the big fish little pond effect (BFLPE). The class (more so than the school) has been shown to be the pivotal frame-of-reference for academic self-concept formation--a local dominance effect. However, many school systems worldwide employ forms of course-by-course tracking, thus exposing students to multiple class environments. Due to the high correlation between multiple student environments, the frame-of-reference used for academic self-concept formation in course-by-course tracked systems is unclear to date. We addressed this unresolved issue by using data from a comprehensive survey that measured the entire population of Austrian eighth-grade students in the domain of mathematics in 2012. General secondary school students were in the core subjects (i.e., mathematics, German, and English) grouped according to ability, whereas regular class composition was the same in all other subjects. Using cross-classified multilevel models, we regressed math self-concept on average math achievement of students' school, math class, and regular class. Consistent with the local dominance effect, we found the BFLPE on the school level to be weak after controlling for the class levels. We found a stronger BFLPE on the regular class level and the strongest BFLPE on the math class level. Our study demonstrates the importance of multiple class environments as frames-of-reference for academic self-concept formation.

Empirically rigorous research on teacher education entry is extremely limited. Evidence on who enters teacher education and why is crucial for identifying undesired gaps in entry and can assist with teacher recruitment. Grounded in prior research, we identified four primary groups of relevant individual-level variables: student/family background, achievement/abilities, personality, and motivation. We empirically tested this conceptual model using rich data from a national cohort of German ninth-graders followed to college/university and their parents. Our study is the first to predict eventual teacher education entry early in secondary school. Although those students who eventually entered teacher education were significantly different from their counterparts across most variables, fewer were conditionally predictive. Social interests, desired working conditions, desire to have children, and students' parents were particularly influential. Implications for research and teacher recruitment are discussed.

Teacher-assigned grades provide important information that is used by universities and colleges to make admission decisions and by employers to make hiring decisions. Besides grades, the results of standardized achievement tests are frequently used for student selection and allocation. However, correlations between the two achievement measures are far from perfect, and researchers have argued that this discrepancy can be at least partially attributed to norm-referenced grading, which is based on the composition of performance in a class. In this study, we investigated the results of a curricular intensification reform, which introduced changes in the distribution of student performance by making enrollment in certain courses mandatory. We investigated whether the reform resulted in changes in the relationship between standardized achievement-test results and teacher-assigned grades. We analyzed cohort control design data from two large representative samples of students from two German states (Baden-Württemberg: N = 5,574; Thuringia: N = 2,202) before and after the reform. Results indicated that students who received a certain grade before the reform (e.g., a grade of A, B, C, or D) differed in their standardized test performance from students who received the same grade after the reform. Furthermore, in math, course-level-specific reform effects on the association between grades and standardized test performance were found to vary between groups of students receiving good and poor grades. Implications for educational policy and school reforms and suggestions for grading are discussed.

In recent decades, several countries have made an effort to increase the enrollment rates and performance of students in science and mathematics by means of mandatory, rigorous course work, which is often referred to as curricular intensification (CI). However, there is a lack of research on intended and unintended effects of CI reforms on achievement and motivation. Using representative data from the National Educational Panel Study, we examined effects of a prototypical CI reform in 1 German state. We compared data from the last student cohort before and the first student cohort after the reform at the end of upper secondary school. There was no statistically significant effect on average achievement. However, we found first evidence for differential effects on English reading and a higher English self-concept of young men after the reform, whereas the reform had a negative effect on young women's math self-concept.

Objective: Although intelligence and personality traits have long been recognized as key predictors of students' academic achievement, little is known about their longitudinal and reciprocal associations. Here, we charted the developmental interplay of intelligence, personality (Big Five) and academic achievement in 3880 German secondary school students, who were assessed four times between the ages 11 and 14 years (i.e., in grades 5, 6, 7, and 8). Method: We fitted random intercept cross‐lagged panel models (RI‐CLPs) to investigate reciprocal within‐person associations between (a) academic achievement and intelligence, (b) academic achievement and personality, as well as (c) intelligence and personality. Results: The results revealed negative within‐person associations between Conscientiousness and Extraversion assessed at the first wave of measurement and intelligence assessed at the second wave. None of the reciprocal personality–achievement associations attained statistical significance. Academic achievement and intelligence showed reciprocal within‐person relations, with the strongest coefficients found for achievement longitudinally predicting intelligence. Conclusions: Our work contributes to developmental theorizing on interrelations between personality, intelligence, and academic achievement, as well as to within‐person conceptualizations in personality research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Equally able students have lower academic self-concept in high achieving schools or classes, a phenomenon known as the big fish little pond effect (BFLPE). The class (more so than the school) has been shown to be the pivotal frame-of-reference for academic self-concept formation—a local dominance effect. However, many school systems worldwide employ forms of course-by-course tracking, thus exposing students to multiple class environments. Due to the high correlation between multiple student environments, the frame-of-reference used for academic self-concept formation in course-by-course tracked systems is unclear to date. We addressed this unresolved issue by using data from a comprehensive survey that measured the entire population of Austrian eighth-grade students in the domain of mathematics in 2012. General secondary school students were in the core subjects (i.e., mathematics, German, and English) grouped according to ability, whereas regular class composition was the same in all other subjects. Using cross-classified multilevel models, we regressed math self-concept on average math achievement of students' school, math class, and regular class. Consistent with the local dominance effect, we found the BFLPE on the school level to be weak after controlling for the class levels. We found a stronger BFLPE on the regular class level and the strongest BFLPE on the math class level. Our study demonstrates the importance of multiple class environments as frames-of-reference for academic self-concept formation. Educational Impact and Implications Statement: A positive perception of one's academic abilities—termed academic self-concept—is a desirable educational goal. As a consequence of social comparison processes, academic self-concept is assumed to be negatively affected when students are placed in classrooms composed of high achieving classmates. We investigated these comparison processes in course-by-course tracked systems in which students are members of several class environments. Our findings suggest that students build their academic self-concept in a certain domain, for instance in math, to a major extent in comparisons with domain-specific class environments (e.g., the math class) and to a minor extent with domain-unrelated class environments. Our study contributes to the psychological understanding of academic self-concept formation and refines big fish little pond effect implications in course-by-course tracked systems: Students' academic self-concept in a certain domain may be hurt when placing them in high achieving domain-specific classes but it will to a lesser extent also be hurt when placing them in high achieving domain-unrelated classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early-life environments can have long-lasting effects on individuals' later life courses. Interestingly, research on the effects of school reforms has hardly adopted this perspective. Therefore, we investigate a staggered school reform that reduced the number of school years and increased weekly instructional time for secondary school students in most German federal states. We analyze this quasi-experiment in a difference-in-differences framework using nationally representative large-scale survey data on 69,513 students who attended university between 1998 and 2016. Using both TWFE and weighted-group ATT estimators, we find negative effects of reform exposure on hours spent attending classes and on self-study. Moreover, reform exposure increased the time gap between school completion and higher education entry. Our results support the view that research should examine unintended long-term effects of school reforms on individual life courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]