Literacy Depends On Nurture, Not Nature

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/11/131113152532.htm

Nov. 13, 2013 — A University at Buffalo education professor has sided with the environment in the timeless "nurture vs. nature" debate after his research found that a child's ability to read depends mostly on where that child is born, rather than on his or her individual qualities.

"Individual characteristics explain only 9 percent of the differences in children who can read versus those who cannot," says Ming Ming Chiu, lead author of an international study that explains this connection and a professor in the Department of Learning and Instruction in UB's Graduate School of Education.

"In contrast, country differences account for 61 percent and school differences account for 30 percent," Chiu says.

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