Educational environments interact with children's unique genetic profiles, leading to wide individual differences in learning ability, motivation, and achievement in different academic subjects - even when children study with the same teacher, attend the same school and follow the same curriculum. This book considers how education can benefit from the recent progress in genetically informative research. The book provides new insights into the origins of individual differences in education traits such as cognitive abilities and disabilities; motivation and personality; behavioural and emotional problems; social functioning; well-being, and academic achievement. Written and edited by international interdisciplinary experts, this book will be of interest to teachers, parents, educational and developmental psychologists, policy makers and researchers in different fields working on educationally-relevant issues.
Review 1
The project proposes a book comprising 15 chapters that will be written by a variety of academics broadly in the fields of behaviour genetics and psychology. It is to be edited by three authors, Professor Sergey Malkyh, Dr Yulia Kovas and Dr Darya Gaysina. The book proposes to address how information from 'psychology, quantitative genetics, molecular genetics, neuroscience, and others' has 'implications... for understanding of complex educational processes'.
The proposal's strengths include contributions from some leading behaviour geneticists in the field. I can speak highly of one of the editors, Dr Yulia Kovas, who is a well-trained and informed behaviour geneticist. She has worked as a teacher in Russia and has a broad and interesting portfolio of research relating to individual differences in learning and education. I do not know the other two editors. The authors of the chapters include a respected and highly cited behaviour geneticist with expertise in childhood sleep problems and related psychopathology (Dr Alice Gregory). Dr Claire Haworth, another rising star in behaviour genetics, is likely to write a chapter on the nature and nurture of wellbeing that will be of high quality and interest to fellow academics. As such, the book looks like it will be a very good quality book of edited chapters written by academic and suitable for an academic audience. The structure seems well thought out.
As the authors say, public and academic understanding of how to synthesise genetic findings with educational practices is naïve and requires many things, including more discussion of the issues raised, better understanding of the science, and public debate with policy-makers. I thought the authors could have provided a stronger argument in the 'Market Need' section. Nevertheless, this book will contribute to this important area.
In terms of the existing literature, a high profile lay book 'G is for Genes' has just been published . It received a huge amount of press coverage and deservedly so: it is written by one of the leaders in the field of behaviour genetics, Professor Robert Plomin, together with Dr Kathryn Asbury, who is a brilliant writer and excellent communicator of ideas in the fields of education and genetics. While the authors of the proposal suggest the two books will complement each other I remain unconvinced because the proposal is not convincingly selling a lay-person book.
In this vein, probably the key weakness of the proposal lies in the lack of clarity regarding the desired audience for the book. The authors seem confused on this point. On page two the editors write that 'this book will be of interest to teachers, parents, educational and developmental psychologists, and researchers in different fields'. In contrast, later in the proposal, in the Primary Market section, there is no mention of teachers and parents, but here suggestions jump around from researchers, practitioners, policy makers, undergraduates and postgraduates. This does not read like a 'primary market' but like a list of everyone the authors could potentially think would buy the book (but strangely no mention of the parents mentioned earlier on!). The titles of the chapters also give away a lack of thought about the audience, some being accessible for a lay audience ('How genetics can be helpful in education'), others being written for a specialist academic audience ('Negative psychological consequences of stress: The role of genetic risk and resilience factors').
A smaller point, but there were notable instances of rather awkwardly-phrased English (e.g. 'To date, no universal, effective for each child educational methods exist'). Once the authors have pinned down a clearer primary audience, I am sure they can improve the language.
To improve the book for publication, my recommendation is that the authors think hard who their primary market could be and then rethink the title and chapter headings to be aligned with
The project proposes a book comprising 15 chapters that will be written by a variety of academics broadly in the fields of behaviour genetics and psychology. It is to be edited by three authors, Professor Sergey Malkyh, Dr Yulia Kovas and Dr Darya Gaysina. The book proposes to address how information from 'psychology, quantitative genetics, molecular genetics, neuroscience, and others' has 'implications... for understanding of complex educational processes'.
The proposal's strengths include contributions from some leading behaviour geneticists in the field. I can speak highly of one of the editors, Dr Yulia Kovas, who is a well-trained and informed behaviour geneticist. She has worked as a teacher in Russia and has a broad and interesting portfolio of research relating to individual differences in learning and education. I do not know the other two editors. The authors of the chapters include a respected and highly cited behaviour geneticist with expertise in childhood sleep problems and related psychopathology (Dr Alice Gregory). Dr Claire Haworth, another rising star in behaviour genetics, is likely to write a chapter on the nature and nurture of wellbeing that will be of high quality and interest to fellow academics. As such, the book looks like it will be a very good quality book of edited chapters written by academic and suitable for an academic audience. The structure seems well thought out.
As the authors say, public and academic understanding of how to synthesise genetic findings with educational practices is naïve and requires many things, including more discussion of the issues raised, better understanding of the science, and public debate with policy-makers. I thought the authors could have provided a stronger argument in the 'Market Need' section. Nevertheless, this book will contribute to this important area.
In terms of the existing literature, a high profile lay book 'G is for Genes' has just been published . It received a huge amount of press coverage and deservedly so: it is written by one of the leaders in the field of behaviour genetics, Professor Robert Plomin, together with Dr Kathryn Asbury, who is a brilliant writer and excellent communicator of ideas in the fields of education and genetics. While the authors of the proposal suggest the two books will complement each other I remain unconvinced because the proposal is not convincingly selling a lay-person book.
In this vein, probably the key weakness of the proposal lies in the lack of clarity regarding the desired audience for the book. The authors seem confused on this point. On page two the editors write that 'this book will be of interest to teachers, parents, educational and developmental psychologists, and researchers in different fields'. In contrast, later in the proposal, in the Primary Market section, there is no mention of teachers and parents, but here suggestions jump around from researchers, practitioners, policy makers, undergraduates and postgraduates. This does not read like a 'primary market' but like a list of everyone the authors could potentially think would buy the book (but strangely no mention of the parents mentioned earlier on!). The titles of the chapters also give away a lack of thought about the audience, some being accessible for a lay audience ('How genetics can be helpful in education'), others being written for a specialist academic audience ('Negative psychological consequences of stress: The role of genetic risk and resilience factors').
A smaller point, but there were notable instances of rather awkwardly-phrased English (e.g. 'To date, no universal, effective for each child educational methods exist'). Once the authors have pinned down a clearer primary audience, I am sure they can improve the language.
To improve the book for publication, my recommendation is that the authors think hard who their primary market could be and then rethink the title and chapter headings to be aligned with