On the influence of environment
What factors can we and should we control in the service of educational attainment?
I’ve been thinking a lot about educational attainment lately - I mean when aren’t we thinking about this? I mean in the more macro sense. I’ve been reading Kathryn Paige Harden’s book, The Genetic Lottery, and it has raised some really complex questions about the heritability of intelligence, whether we have much control over learning, and what elements of the environment we realistically can and can’t influence. If you’re reading this as a teaching practitioner, you will recognise these feelings of existential anxiety and helplessness. Is there really any point to what I’m doing if so many factors of teaching and learning are out of my control?
I’m fully intending to collect my next pay cheque, so I’m going to say yes. But what if our control over the environment is too successful. What if once we remove our intervention, students regress? I’m going to say something that might be controversial about the differences between public and non-government schools that might go some way to explaining why public school students perform better in higher education. In essence, I think that non-government schools have more control over environment, but this environmental influence can’t last forever.
Here are some takeaways about gene-environment correlations - the extent to which our heritable traits can manipulate our environment. This has framed my thinking about the interactions between what students bring with them to school, how their traits prompt responses from us as teachers and the way they are able to manipulate institutional offerings to their educational advantage.
A large (enough) chunk of intelligence, and even educational attainment itself is heritable. This doesn’t mean that individuals can’t learn, but the influence of heritable traits is significant.
The genes of parents influence the home environment. We all know the old chestnut about parents providing books in homes resulting in engaged and capable readers? Well the passive gene-environment correlation here bears this out. Parental traits influence the likelihood of a house with books, which in turn sparks an interest in reading. Side note: just plopping some books in a house probably doesn’t cause greater attainment. So we can see there are both inherent benefits and problems with this knowledge.
Students’ genetically influenced traits manipulate the environment in an evocative way, for example a fussy baby will evoke change in their environment as parents spend time and energy soothing them. The same could be said for the anxious student who constantly seeks assurance and feedback on their learning.
Later, students can actively select aspects of the environment that work well with their genetically influenced traits. This becomes more powerful as students enter adolescence and parent influence loses its power. Things like subject and course selection have an effect on attainment.
Realistically, I think schools have most control over evocative and active environment, and independent schools even more so. Aside from being able to select for intelligence through scholarship programs, the ability of parents to pay fees suggests an educated parent community. This passive environment gives students a head-start. But the big influences are the evocative and the active. Smaller class sizes, especially in senior school, could mean that teachers are able to respond to the unique needs of each student - teachers can differentiate responsively in real time. Greater pastoral responsibility and teacher/mentor to student ratios enable timely conversations about struggles with learning, and holistic responses to wellbeing issues. The active environment is potentially more advantageous too, with more niche subjects offered by well-funded schools that are able to run classes for very small cohorts, offering what almost amounts to tutoring. Personalised learning can be offered through more frequent feedback and knowledge of student interests, strengths and weaknesses.
All of this control and investment in the environment, which is a lot more pronounced in senior school, takes advantage of gene-environment correlations, potentially resulting in strong student growth. Certain data analysis packages can predict ATAR and HSC performance based on NAPLAN and ability tests, and independent schools frequently show growth beyond that predicted by these measures.
But as with many interventions, students tend to regress to their rank position soon after those interventions are removed. All of the advantages of personalised learning disappear on Day One of university. So I’m left with a couple of questions: is the answer to replicate the environmental influence in public schools to level the playing field? Or do schools need to shift their focus to metacognition and independence? This move may temporarily shift private schools down the league tables, but ultimately benefit their students’ lifelong educational attainment.
Because I’m a novice in this area, I’m curious to know what others think. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes out of the comments.