Exploring the Influence of Early Childhood Education and Care on the Etiology of Achievement
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Exploring the Influence of Early Childhood Education and Care on the Etiology of Achievement Callie W. Little1,4 · Sally Larsen1 · Brian Byrne1 · Jessica A. R. Logan2 · Richard K. Olson3 · William L. Coventry1 Received: 28 August 2019 / Revised: 12 July 2020 / Accepted: 7 August 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The present study used a genetically-sensitive quantile regression approach to examine the relation between participation in early childhood education and care (ECEC) and subsequent school performance in literacy and numeracy at grades 3, 5, 7, and 9. The sample consisted of 1255 twin pairs (596 MZ; 659 DZ) with information on both ECEC and the National Assessment Program-Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) scores from the Twin Study of NAPLAN. Results indicated variation in heritability estimates across the distributions of achievement, suggesting that different patterns of etiological influences may exist among children of different ability levels. Additionally, the results provided no evidence that ECEC significantly influenced achievement, and in the genetically-sensitive analyses, no evidence that ECEC moderated the influences of heritability of achievement for typically advantaged children. These results suggest that ECEC may not provide the levels of environmental support for later achievement that advocates claim, although we acknowledge that ECEC quality, which was not measured in the current study, may make a difference in whether or not ECEC influences achievement. Keywords Early childhood education and care · Quantile regression · Reading · Behavior genetics · Writing · Numeracy
Introduction It is well established that genetic influences account for between 40 and 70% of the variation in achievement outcomes such as reading and math (e.g. Kovas et al. 2007; Little et al. 2017; Olson et al. 2011), which leaves approximately 50% of the variance due to potentially malleable environmental features, or to interplay between genes and environmental contexts. Twin samples allow for the unique opportunity to parcel variance in educational outcomes into Edited by Stephen Petrill. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10519-020-10013-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Callie W. Little [email protected] 1
University of New England, Armidale, Australia
2
The Ohio State University, Columbus, USA
3
University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, USA
4
Department of Psychology, Library Rd, Armidale, NSW 2350, Australia
influences from genes and from the environment. These specialized samples accomplish this by comparing the genetic and environmental similarity between monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins to examine the proportion of variance attributable to additive genetic influences (or heritability), shared environmental influences (non-genetic influences that make siblings more alike) and non-shared environmental influenc
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