TY  - JOUR
A1  - Kretschmann, Julia
A1  - Westphal, Andrea
A1  - Vock, Miriam
T1  - Does it pay to be one of the oldest in class?
T2  - Learning and instruction : the journal of the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction
N2  - Several studies have revealed that older students in a year group reach higher achievement scores than younger students in that group. But less is known about how students' relative age in class relates to their self-perception of academic achievement, their social acceptance in class and to how teachers judge their abilities. Therefore, we examined relative age effects within class on students' academic self-concept, peer relations, grades, and teachers' secondary school recommendation. Analyses were based on a sample of N = 18,956 German fourth graders, who had never been retained or accelerated. We applied multilevel regression to control for covariates at the individual and classroom level. There were no substantial relative age effects within class across any of the outcomes, except for a small advantage for the youngest in their reading self-concept. Our findings therefore contradict the common assumption that younger students in class are disadvantaged compared to their older classmates.
KW  - Relative age effects
KW  - Month of birth
KW  - Academic self-concept
KW  - Peer
KW  - relations
KW  - Teacher judgments
Y1  - 2021
UR  - https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/56568
SN  - 0959-4752
SN  - 1873-3263
VL  - 74
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  -