The present study examined the predictive effects of intellectual ability, self-concept, goal orientations, learning strategies, popularity and parent involvement on academic achievement. Hierarchical regression analysis and path analysis were performed among a sample of 1398 high school students (mean age = 12.5; SD =.67) from eight education centers from the province of Alicante (Spain). Cognitive and non-cognitive variables were measured using validated questionnaires, whereas academic achievement was assessed using end-of-term grades obtained by students in nine subjects. The results revealed significant predictive effects of all of the variables. The model proposed had a satisfactory fit, and all of the hypothesized relationships were significant. These findings support the importance of including non-cognitive variables along with cognitive variables when predicting a model of academic achievement.
The aims of this work were to identify and establish differential characteristics in learning strategies, goal orientations, and self-concept between overachieving, normal-achieving and underachieving secondary students. A total of 1400 Spanish first and second year high school students from the South-East geographical area participated in this study. Three groups of students were established: a group with underachieving students, a group with a normal level of achievement, and a third group with overachieving students. The students were assigned to each group depending on the residual punctuations obtained from a multiple regression analysis in which the punctuation of an IQ test was the predictor and a measure composed of the school grades of nine subjects was the criteria. The results of one-way ANOVA and the Games-Howell post-hoc test showed that underachieving students had significantly lower punctuations in all of the measures of learning strategies and learning goals, as well as all of the academic self-concept, personal self-concept, parental relationship, honesty, and personal stability factors. In contrast, overachieving students had higher punctuations than underachieving students in the same variables and higher punctuations than normal-achieving students in most of the variables in which significant differences were detected. These results have clear educational implications.
These results highlight the importance of metacognition during early adolescence and suggest that parent involvement is crucial for the future development of educational models.
Using various identification methods, differences between underachieving and non-underachieving gifted students in personal, familial, social, and school variables were analyzed in a sample of 164 gifted students with IQs of 120 or higher; the sample was drawn from a larger sample of 1,400 compulsory secondary education students. Three procedures for identifying underachieving students were used: the standardized difference method, the regression method, and the Rasch method. The different profiles of underachieving and non-underachieving students in the personal, familial, social, and school variables were compared using MANOVA and ANOVA tests. Results revealed that underachieving gifted students scored significantly lower in learning strategies, goal orientations, self-concept, attitudes toward teachers, and perceived parent involvement in school variables. These results have clear educational implications as a result of identifying differences in non-cognitive factors.
).sense, there have been stereotypical views of gender related abilities which contribute to this disparity. Nevertheless, literature review have pointed out this tendency, like Hyde & Linn [7], who concluded in a meta-analysis that there were more similarities than differences between boys and girls, even in those areas where typical gaps have been detected, like mathematics or science. These advances allow overcoming classical theories, focusing on more objective outcomes about the performance trends of boys and girls.
B. Intellectual Ability and Academic AchievementIntellectual ability is the most studied cognitive variable to predict academic achievement, showing a clear direct impact [8], although with some variability [9]. To understand the extent of motivational variables on the prediction of academic achievement, Gagné and St. Pè re [10] assessed the contribution of intrinsic, extrinsic and persistence motivation to academic achievement after controlling the predictive power of intelligence in a sample of 200 female high school students. They confirm that cognitive ability is the best predictor of school achievement but also a lack of correlation between intellectual ability and motivation. It is important to discriminate the level of prediction of motivational variables beyond intellectual ability.
C. Self-Concept and Academic AchievementAmong the motivational variables, self-concept has been considered as one of the major constructs by the scientific community [11]-[15]. Self-concept is usually defined as a set of perceptions of personal behaviors in concrete situations through inferences about the self in different domains [16]. The multidimensional approach of self-concept is a key to its consideration as one of the most important motivational theories of the last 30 years [17]. In the educational field, academic self-concept and academic achievement are often highly correlated, even more so than other self-concept or self-esteem domains [18]. Huang [19], in a recent meta-analysis, confirmed medium to longitudinal relations between self-concept and academic achievement, as have additional previous long-terms studies [20].
D. Self-Regulation and Academic AchievementAccording to previous studies, self-concept is closely related to other motivational and cognitive variables [21], [22], and for this reason, they have been included in all recent models of academic achievement. In relation to students "ability to self-regulate their own process, it is clear that constitutes a key element in explaining academic success [23], [24]. Self-regulation refers to students´" self-generated
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.