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Gene-environment interaction analysis of school quality and educational inequality
Kim Stienstra1, Antonie Knigge2, Ineke Maas2,3
1Department of Sociology/ICS, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands. Kim.Stienstra@eui.eu.
NPJ Science of Learning
|March 1, 2024
Summary
School quality does not change genetic or shared environmental influences on educational performance. However, higher school socioeconomic status (SES) reduces genetic influences, suggesting school-based factors play a role.
Area of Science:
- Behavioral genetics
- Sociology
- Educational psychology
Background:
- Gene-environment interactions are crucial for understanding educational performance.
- Schools can either amplify or compensate for socioeconomic inequalities.
- The influence of genetics and environment on education may vary by school quality.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how school quality affects genetic and environmental influences on educational performance.
- To examine gene-environment interactions within different school environments.
- To understand the role of schools in moderating educational inequality.
Main Methods:
- Twin models applied to large-scale Dutch administrative data.
- Analysis of 18,384 same-sex and 11,050 opposite-sex twin pairs.
- Inclusion of primary school quality and socioeconomic status (SES) data.
Main Results:
- School quality did not moderate genetic or shared-environmental influences on educational performance after accounting for SES.
- A gene-environment interplay was observed for school SES, with genetic variance decreasing as school SES increased.
- Parental SES influenced the school SES effect, but did not fully explain the moderation, indicating school-based processes are also involved.
Conclusions:
- School quality, independent of SES, does not appear to alter the relative importance of genetic and shared environmental factors in educational achievement.
- School socioeconomic context significantly interacts with genetic influences on education.
- School-based factors, beyond parental SES, contribute to the observed gene-environment interplay in educational performance.
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