Sat 20.09.2014 - 11:30-13:30 - Plečnik 2-3

How Does High Early Cognitive Ability Fare in Finnish Primary Education?   Paper  Presentation

Presenter: Sirkku Kupiainen
Author(s): Sirkku Kupiainen, (University of Helsinki, Finland), Risto Hotulainen, (University of Helsinki, Finland), Mari-Pauliina Vainikainen, (University of Helsinki, Finland), Samuel Greiff, (University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg), Jarkko Hautamäki, (University of Helsinki, Finland)

Since the 1990s, there has been a growing interest in assessing not only curricular achievement but also the more general cognitive and affective goals of education, believed to indicate readiness for new learning and successful adaptation to the rapidly changing demands of the future. These transversal skills are seen to develop through good curricular education (Adey et al. 2007; Demetriu et al., 2011; Hautamäki et al., 2002; Hautamäki & Kupiainen, 2014). Within this framework, the present study looks at the development of Finnish primary school students’ transversal skills through primary education with a special focus on students showing high cognitive ability at school start. With data from a longitudinal study (N=600), two structural equation models (SEM) were compared to explain students’ 6th grade verbal and mathematical reasoning and complex problem solving (cf. Kupiainen et al., 2014 and Greiff et al., 2013, respectively) with non-verbal cognitive competence measured at school start, curricular reading and mathematics measured with standardized tests at grades 1, 2, and 5, and verbal and mathematical reasoning measured at grade 4. The preliminary results show that early cognitive competence does carry through primary education but only half of the top 10 % student of grade 1 score among the best 20 % at grade 4, about 40 % among the best 20 % in reasoning and complex problem solving at grade 6, and still fewer among the best 20 % in 6th grade GPA. Staying at top was a little more common for girls than for boys. In the presentation, the results will also be discussed from the point of view of education policy: has the Finnish education policy’s strong emphasis on equity through helping weak students led to an inadequate challenging of those at the other end of the echelon (cf., Collins & Gan, 2013)?

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