Little is known about the etiology of developmental change and continuity in educational achievement. Here, we study achievement from primary school to the end of compulsory education for 6000 twin pairs in the UK-representative Twins Early Development Study sample. Results showed that educational achievement is highly heritable across school…

We examine recent research across countries and cultures in regard to the issues related to the formation of gifted and talented education perspectives, policies, and practices. Many modern cultures and subcultures have developed formal and informal definitions of what it means to be gifted and talented, and when we compare the perceptions,…

In the UK, children with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties (SEBD) may engage with the Nurture approach: a therapeutic model of educational intervention. Despite growing evidence that this approach can promote the developmental and educational attainment of these children, there has been little emphasis on how children might relate…

Crude and dangerous ideas about the genetic heritability of intelligence, and a supposed biological basis for the Black/White achievement gap, are alive and well inside the education policy process but taking new and more subtle forms. Drawing on Critical Race Theory, the paper analyses recent hereditarian writing, in the UK and the USA, and…

This paper examines the challenges facing research on nurture groups and on the wider field of nurture in education. A four-level model is proposed based on severity of need, ranging from universal applications in nurturing schools and communities, through to addressing the needs of children and young people whose needs are so great that a nurture…

Background: The paper plots some shifts in educational policy between 1988 and 2009 in England that launched the rhetoric of a "gender gap" as a key political and social concern. The rhetoric was fuelled by a rise in the importance of quantification in technologies of accountability and global comparisons of achievement. A focus on boys…

This article is a brief personal reflection on the state of research into the relation between education and social mobility. Quantitative methods are both essential and advancing in this field. Sociologists seek scientific solutions but achieve ethical neutrality only with difficulty because all are tempted to bias from social and political…

A behavioral genetic analysis of general writing ability was conducted using teacher assessments based on UK National Curriculum criteria for a sample of 3296 same-sex pairs of 7-year-old twins. Writing was highly heritable within the normal range (0.66) and at the low extreme (0.70). Environmental influences were almost all non-shared, with…

The genetic and environmental etiologies of 3 aspects of low mathematical performance (math disability) and the full range of variability (math ability) were compared for boys and girls in a sample of 5,348 children age 10 years (members of 2,674 pairs of same-sex and opposite-sex twins) from the United Kingdom (UK). The measures, which we…

The authors assessed 2,502 ten-year-old children, members of 1,251 pairs of twins, on a Web-based battery of problems from 5 diverse aspects of mathematics assessed as part of the U.K. national curriculum. This 1st genetic study into the etiology of variation in different domains of mathematics showed that the heritability estimates were moderate…

Recent years have seen a rapid increase in opportunities for very young children in the UK to participate in musical activity. These opportunities are provided by a range of music professionals who are expanding their work into the early years sector. Support for this increase in early childhood music draws on recent research into aspects of…

Despite the importance of learning abilities and disabilities in education and child development, little is known about their genetic and environmental origins in the early school years. We report results for English (which includes reading, writing, and speaking), mathematics, and science as well as general cognitive ability in a large and…

The genetic relationship between intelligence and components of cognition remains controversial. Conflicting results may be a function of the limited number of methods used in experimental evaluation. The current study is the first to use CANTAB (The Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery). This is a battery of validated computerised…

Three leadership characteristics are experience, competencies, and spiritual awareness. Eighteen youths spent a week on the remote island of Mull (United Kingdom) to explore their own spirituality away from the noise of 20th-century living. Activities using music, discussion, art, poetry, and outdoor experience acted as catalysts for spiritual…

This collection of references and research findings was initially compiled in connection with a conference on the "Linguistic Needs of West Indian Children." The first section includes research reviews and critiques. The second section includes research on the following subjects: (1) ability; (2) attainment/achievement; (3) attitudes,…