Thoren Katharina, Heinig Elisa, Brunner Martin
Division of Evaluation and Quality Management in Education, Department of Education and Psychology, Free University Berlin Berlin, Germany.
Division of Early Childhood Education, Department of Education and Psychology, Free University Berlin Berlin, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2016 May 17;7:679. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00679. eCollection 2016.
A child's age in comparison to the age of her or his classmates (relative age) has been found to be an influential factor on academic achievement, particularly but not exclusively at the beginning of formal schooling. However, few studies have focused on the generalizability of relative age effects. To close this gap, the present study analyzes the generalizability across students with and without immigrant backgrounds, across three student cohorts that entered school under a changing law of school enrollment, and across classes. To this end, we capitalized on representative large-scale data sets from three student cohorts attending public schools in Berlin, the capital of Germany. We analyzed the data using a multilevel framework. Our results for the overall student sample indicate relative age effects for reading and mathematics in favor of the relatively older students in Grade 2 that become somewhat smaller in size in Grade 3. By Grade 8, relative age effects had vanished in reading and had even reversed in favor of the relatively young in mathematics. Furthermore, relative age effects were not found to be systematically different among students with and without immigrant backgrounds, student cohorts, or across classes. Taken together, these results empirically underscore the broad generalizability of the findings as found for the overall student population and replicate the pattern of findings on relative effects as identified by the majority of previous studies.
与同班同学年龄相比，孩子的年龄（相对年龄）已被发现是学业成绩的一个影响因素，尤其是在正规学校教育开始时，但不仅限于此。然而，很少有研究关注相对年龄效应的普遍性。为了填补这一空白，本研究分析了有移民背景和无移民背景学生之间、在入学法不断变化的情况下入学的三个学生队列之间以及不同班级之间相对年龄效应的普遍性。为此，我们利用了来自德国首都柏林三批就读于公立学校的学生队列的具有代表性的大规模数据集。我们使用多层次框架分析了数据。我们对全体学生样本的研究结果表明，二年级时阅读和数学方面存在相对年龄效应，有利于相对年龄较大的学生，而到三年级时这种效应有所减小。到八年级时，阅读方面的相对年龄效应消失，数学方面甚至出现逆转，有利于相对年龄较小的学生。此外，在有移民背景和无移民背景的学生、学生队列或不同班级之间，未发现相对年龄效应存在系统性差异。综上所述，这些结果从经验上强调了这些发现对于全体学生群体的广泛普遍性，并重现了大多数先前研究所确定的相对效应的结果模式。
