Does it pay to be one of the oldest in class?
- 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.
Author details: | Julia KretschmannORCiDGND, Andrea WestphalORCiDGND, Miriam VockORCiDGND |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2021.101463 |
ISSN: | 0959-4752 |
ISSN: | 1873-3263 |
Title of parent work (English): | Learning and instruction : the journal of the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction |
Subtitle (English): | Relative age effects on academic self-concept, peer relations, and teacher judgments in German primary schools |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Place of publishing: | Amsterdam |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2021/08/01 |
Publication year: | 2021 |
Release date: | 2022/11/10 |
Tag: | Academic self-concept; Month of birth; Peer; Relative age effects; Teacher judgments; relations |
Volume: | 74 |
Article number: | 101463 |
Number of pages: | 12 |
Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Bildungswissenschaften / Department Erziehungswissenschaft |
DDC classification: | 3 Sozialwissenschaften / 37 Bildung und Erziehung / 370 Bildung und Erziehung |
Peer review: | Referiert |