Personality psychologist have come a long way from believing that personality is “set in stone” across the lifespan, to believing that personality changes across the lifespan, both slowly and quickly, and can even be changed through own volition or interventions. A broad body of research now provides convincing evidence that personality has stable and changeable aspects across the lifespan. In this lifespan approach much less focus has been set on the early ages until adolescence. Adolescence is characterized by new challenges with the need to navigate through an increasingly complex and mandatory world, and also to do so increasingly independent. Adolescents are faced with new tasks and opportunities such as the exploration of their own abilities, the formation of their identity and personality, and the extension of their social networks beyond the family. In this period, they spend a large amount of time in educational environments such as school. When looking for possible factors and sources that help us understand how adolescents develop in their characteristic pattern of feelings, thoughts, and behaviors, educational contexts seem to be possible candidates. Moreover, the interdependence of personality and education can also be seen in the predictive power of personality for educational (and life) outcomes. Although there was ample evidence for broad personality traits being strong predictors of life outcomes, it was less clear whether more narrowly and domain-specific characteristics and, in particular, school-specific behaviors would also relate to educational success and real-life outcomes across the lifespan. In this talk I want to present current
research on both topics, personality development in educational contexts as well as personality as predictor of educational outcomes.