Phantom and big-fish-little-pond-effects on academic self-concept and academic achievement: Evidence from English early primary schools

Abstract The Big-Fish-Little-Pond Effect (BFLPE) suggests that school-average achievement has a negative effect on academic self-concept (ASC); some research has also verified a negative effect on students' academic achievement. Our study evaluates the compositional effects of school-average achievement on both outcomes, using a longitudinal sample of English early primary school students in Year 1 and Year 4. We provide evidence for BFLPEs in children as young as six to nine years of age. Further, we show that the BFLPE is a potential mechanism in the negative compositional effect of school average achievement in Year 1 on students' achievement in Year 4. Once adjustments for measurement error are made, the negative effect of school-average achievement on students' self-concept, and on their subsequent achievement, becomes even more negative. Our findings question previous research suggesting that attending a school with higher average achievement necessarily advances students’ outcomes.

• Publication year

  2021

• Venue

  Learning and Instruction

• Publication date

  2021-02-01

• Fields of study

  Education, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/J.LEARNINSTRUC.2020.101399
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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