Dennis Föste-Eggers

In the field of educational research, there are already findings on multiplicative effects that can be attributed to an intersectionality persepective: For higher education, Lörz's (2019) findings suggest that immigrant youth from non-academic homes are less likely to complete their studies. The aim of our study is to investigate how determinants of social inequality (immigrant background and parental educational level) impacts the relationship between conscientiousness and academic achievement. We use data from the 2008 cohort of a German panel study (Heine et al., 2017). The data enable to investigate the effects of the Big Five personality traits on the (perceived) achievement in university over a span of five years.

Lörz's (2019) findings suggest that immigrant youth from non-academic homes are less likely to complete their studies. The aim of this study is to investigate whether the effect of conscientiousness on academic achievement varies with determinants of social inequality (immigrant background and parental educational level). We focus on conscientiousness because it is one of the most important factors influencing academic achievement outside the domain of cognitive factors (Poropat, 2009). We use data from the 2008 cohort of the DZHW Panel Study of School Leavers (Heine et al., 2017). The data make it possible to investigate the effects of the Big Five personality traits on the (perceived) achievement in university over a span of five years.

Findings by Lörz (2019) suggest that students with an immigrant background from non-academic parents are less likely to complete their studies. Therefore we investigate: (1) Do members of this group show evidence for poorer academic performance? (2) Does the effect of conscientiousness on academic performance vary between members of this and other groups? Using data from the DZHW-Studienberechtigtenpanel 2008 (Heine et al. 2008) we found (1) lower (self-assessed) academic performance by Members of the aforementioned group. Moreover, (2) although in other groups there is evidence for a positive effect of conscientiousnesson academic performance , this is not the case in the aforementioned group.

We investigate environmental attitudes (EAs) in PISA 2015, to test the stability of the findings based on PISA 2006. Including data of 52 countries, a three-level (students - schools - countries) regression analysis on awareness of environmental matters (ENVAWARE) reveals that most of the variance is located at the student level. However, there is substantial variance on the school and country levels, indicating the impact of context-level variables in predicting EAs.
In line with previous findings, important predictors of ENVAWARE are science literacy and science-related attitudes. Optimism regarding environmental issues is negatively related to ENVAWARE. Interactive teaching methods show a significant, yet small effect on ENVAWARE.