Predicting early academic achievement: The role of higher-versus lower-order personality traits

The study explored the role of children’s (N = 193) individual differences and parental characteristics at the beginning of the first year of schooling in predicting students’ attainment of academic standards at the end of the year. Special attention was paid to children’s personality as perceived by the teachers’ assistants. Along with parents’ education, parenting practices and first-graders’ cognitive ability, the incremental predictive power of children’s higher-order (robust) personality traits was compared to the contribution of lower-order (specific) traits in explaining academic achievement. The specific traits provided a somewhat more accurate prediction than the robust traits. Unique contributions of maternal authoritative parenting, children’s cognitive ability, and personality to academic achievement were established. The ratings of first-graders’ conscientiousness (a higher-order trait) improved the prediction of academic achievement based on parenting and cognitive ability by 12%, whereas assistant teacher’s perceived children’s intelligence and low antagonism (lower-order traits) improved the prediction by 17%.