Does Temperament Influence Children's Achievement in School?

From Chapter 5 of Temperament in the Classroom: Understanding Individual Differences, by Barbara K. Keogh, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2003 by Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Schools are places where, for the first time, children face real and objective standards for success and where they see their achievements relative to the achievements of other children. Preschool children can pretend to “read” a book, but in elementary school, children must really learn to read. Preschoolers can play number games, but elementary school children must learn more advanced arithmetic skills. Children differ greatly in how well and how quickly they master these objective tasks or even whether they can succeed in the traditional sense at all. What accounts for these differences? Intelligence (i.e., cognitive level) is the most frequent reason given for a student’s academic success or failure in school, and cognitive ability may be a “necessary but not sufficient” condition for learning. Think of the bright underachieving student or the less cognitively able student who is an outstanding achiever. Although ability is important, it is not the only reason for successful achievement. Prior experiences, motivation, and the quality of instruction all affect student achievement in school. So does temperament.

It is reasonable that temperament may have an even greater impact on achievement than on intelligence. Students in school must modify and direct their energies and activity levels appropriately and must respond adaptively and flexibly to challenging instructional demands. Students are expected to work on projects that require time and many steps to complete. Some can respond successfully to such demands, others give up early, while others “hang in” until projects are finished. These differences are in part related to individual differences in temperament.

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT
TEMPERAMENT AND ACHIEVEMENT?

Support for the contribution of temperament to children’s academic achievement comes from the research of Martin and his associates, who conducted a systematic program of work, focused mainly on preschool and elementary school children (Martin, 1989; Martin, Olejnik, & Gaddis, 1994).


Temperament Characteristics that Influence Learning

Martin and colleagues identified three temperament characteristics as important influences in classroom learning: activity, distractibility, and persistence. Each may contribute positively or negatively to children’s success in school.

Activity

Martin described activity as “motoric vigor.” Children at the upper extreme cannot seem to sit still, overflow with energy, and have difficulty modulating their activity. Think of the active, fidgety child whose motor seems to run all the time. Quiet time is a problem for this type of child. In contrast, other children are low in energy, tire easily, and prefer quiet time and sedentary activities to physical games. Extremely high or extremely low motoric energy can affect children’s behavior in the classroom, contributing to their adjustment and achievement.

Distractibility

Distractibility refers to how easily a child’s attention is interrupted by things going on around him or her in the classroom, especially by conditions that are virtually ignored by others. A distractible child has problems staying focused on his or her own seatwork but may attend to noises in the hallway, to the teacher’s conversation with another child, and to the whispers of two children in the back of the room.

Persistence

Persistence addresses attention span and the child’s ability and willingness to continue working on difficult tasks. Low persistence describes the child who gives up when an assignment is not easily finished, who stops working when the task is hard, and who seems unable to follow through and complete a project. Conversely, other children are overly persistent. They can become so involved in a single activity or school assignment that they are unwilling to stop or change what they are doing and they become upset when interrupted. Their persistence gets in the way of adapting to the many changing demands of a classroom. These personal characteristics are well recognized by teachers, and the reasons for the behaviors may be both motivational and temperamental.

Summary results from five studies in Martin’s research program (see Martin, 1989, for a review) are illustrative. In these studies, children were given standardized achievement tests anywhere from 5 months to 4 years after teachers rated them on temperament using Martin’s (1988) scale. Findings confirmed that there were significant negative correlations between activity level and achievement in reading and math, such that high activity was associated with low achievement. Associations between distractibility and persistence and reading and math were even stronger, confirming that children who did not persist well and who were distractible had lower achievement compared with their peers.

Especially interesting findings emerged from studies of temperament and achievement in children as they progressed through grades one through five. A summary discussion may be found in Martin, Olejnik, and Gaddis (1994). First-grade teachers’ ratings of children’s distractibility were correlated negatively with fifth-grade achievement. High persistence in the first grade was positively associated with achievement in the fifth grade, suggesting again that persistence is an important attribute in learning success. In contrast, distractibility had a disruptive effect. The magnitude of the associations (the average of correlation coefficients was .41) is impressive given that there was a 4-year time period between ratings of temperament and the assessment of achievement. In these studies, the contribution of intelligence or IQ was taken into account, giving even more weight to the size of the relationships between temperament and scores on achievement tests.

The three temperament attributes identified by Martin and his associates (1994) as important in students’ academic achievement are consistent with the findings of temperament researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), who also found that the factor of task orientation was significantly related to young children’s performance in school (Keogh, 1983, 1989). Findings from both research groups underscored the generalization that temperament dimensions of activity level, distractibility, and persistence, which make up the task orientation factor, have a significant impact on children’s learning in school as assessed with standardized achievement measures. This is not surprising given the obvious demands of school for quiet, sustained effort.

The impact of temperament on achievement is not entirely consistent, however, and researchers have found somewhat different patterns of relationships at different ages. For example, Maziade, Coté, Boutin, Boudreault, and Thivierge (1986) reported only minimal relationships between temperament and achievement when the children in their study were 7 years
of age, but significant correlations between temperament and achievement when the same children were 12 years old. These findings may reflect differences in children’s development and maturity, but they may also be related to differences in the content of instructional programs at different ages. It is likely that temperament characteristics such as persistence and distractibility become increasingly important as the content of the curriculum becomes more complex and assignments become longer and more difficult.