Genetics and Education: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Seminar
- Time:
- 16:00 - 17:00
- Date:
- 30 January 2014
- Venue:
- Psychology Department Room 3095, Building 44 (Shackleton) Highfield Campus Southampton SO17 1BJ
For more information regarding this seminar, please telephone Allyson Marchi on 02380 599645 or email A.Marchi@soton.ac.uk .
Event details
The talk considers potential contributions of genetics to education (good), the general view about genetics in education (bad), and attempts to date to identify specific genes throughout the genome responsible for ubiquitous genetic influence (ugly).
The talk considers potential contributions of genetics to education (good), the general view about genetics in education (bad), and attempts to date to identify specific genes throughout the genome responsible for ubiquitous genetic influence (ugly). I will highlight several important recent behavioural genetic findings relevant to education. Research suggests that every individual is likely to have a unique combination of genetic variants, each having only a small effect on abilities and performance.
Moreover, each genetic variant contributes to many different traits. Contrary to common opinion, these genetic effects are not static or deterministic, but change throughout life and in different educational and cultural contexts. Recent and future advances in educationally relevant molecular genetic and genomic research might help understand the aetiology of individual differences in learning and find ways to improve learning for all.
Speaker information
Dr Yulia Kovas , Goldsmiths, University of London. Dr Kovas has a BA and MA in Literature, Linguistics, and Pedagogy and teaching qualifications from the State Pedagogical University of St Petersburg. In Russia she taught children of all ages for 6 years, when she first started thinking about the origins of individual variation in learning abilities. She received a B.Sc. in Psychology from Birkbeck College in 2003, and M.Sc. in Social, Genetic, and Developmental Psychiatry from King’s College in 2004. She received her Ph.D. in 2007 from the SGDP Centre, Kings College, University of London (focusing on individual differences in mathematics).