The “Discovery” of Youth’s Learning Potential Early in the Life Course: Project description, research questions, methods and design

“Underachievement” is a well-established educational research field. However, both longitudinaland interdisciplinary studies on the interplay between individuals’ learning potential and educationalattainment are rare, as are analyses of life course consequences of underachievement. Thispsychological, sociological, and economic longitudinal study aims to contribute to our knowledgeof social disparities in the processes of discovering youths’ learning potential—and its development—in families, schools, and vocational training markets.We are less interested in replicating well-researched variations in the achievement-abilityrelationshipbetween social classes. Instead, we focus on within-group differences, both duringschooling (within social classes) and during transitions from school to vocational training andlabor markets (within educational groups). Such intra-group differences would reveal whetherunderachievement of children from lower-class and higher-class families is generated by similaror different mechanisms, and whether the mechanisms common to all social classes differ instrength in generating underachievement.Our unique data collection would allow us to investigate intra-group variance, even the crucialrelationships between achievement, ability, and personality. In addition, a novel decomposition offamily background will be coupled with a multidimensional life course approach examining interactionbetween youth and their siblings, partners, and parents