Identifying genetic and environmental risk factors and their interplay for achievement at school

Both nature and nurture are important in determining how well children do at school. Some children struggle and under achieve at school, so knowing what environmental influences are important for successful performance at school could result in changes in education that provide the best environments for learning for each child. Nature -- the genes that children inherit from their parents are also important, yet so little is understood about which genes are important and why. Also, nature and nurture act together, so that certain environments only make a difference if an individual has a certain set of genes. Improving our understanding of how genes and environments work together is essential if we are to understand how children learn at school, and how we can improve education so that all children reach their potential. If all children were given exactly the same educational experience some children would still do better than others. This is because each child is a unique individual who brings both nature and nurture to the classroom. Using a large sample of children with information on their environments, their DNA and their school performance Dr. Haworth will unravel the effects of nature and nurture on academic performance.

Aims: To identify specific environments and specific genes that influence school academic performance, with the eventual goal of proposing early environmental interventions to guard against poor performance. Critically, the environments will be studied in the context of a genetically sensitive design, and the genetics will be studied in the context of an environmentally sensitive design. Background: Under-achievement in school has serious consequences in later life. Research indicates that both genetic and environmental influences impact school performance, but little research has focused on identifying specific environmental factors and specific genetic factors, as well as the interplay between genetic and environmental factors.
Objectives: (1) Identifying specific environments in the context of genetic variation: Using the MZ differences methodology (which controls for genetic influences) and incorporating specific longitudinally measured environments into the twin design will increase understanding of how environments influence school achievement. (2) Identifying specific genes in the context of environmental variation: Large-scale genome-wide association studies of school achievement in the Twins Early Development Study (TEDS) will provide reliable genetic risk indicators. These genetic risk indictors will then be used in behavioural genomic analyses with the measured environments identified in objective 1 to assess gene-by-environment interaction and bring together research in nature and nurture.
Design and methodology: TEDS, a study of over 10,000 twin pairs funded by the MRC since 1995, includes extensive longitudinal data on academic performance and on home, school and classroom environments in primary and secondary school. Diverse academic achievement measures in TEDS include direct test data and teacher reports based on criteria from the National Curriculum at Key Stages 1, 2 and 3. Data on pre-school cognitive development and the early home environment are also available, as well as measures of both the home and classroom environments at 7, 9, 10, 12 and 14 years. TEDS has also been funded by the second wave of the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium, which will provide genome-wide SNP and copy-number variation data for 4000 individuals, allowing large-scale genome-wide association analyses.
Scientific and Medical Opportunities: TEDS represents an internationally unique resource for interdisciplinary research into the interplay of genetic and environmental influences on individual differences in school achievement. This research will highlight salient environmental factors that may be targeted by future research into effective interventions, and also identify reliable genetic risk indicators that can be used to identify the pathways between genes to brain to behaviour.