Innate ability, health, motivation, and social capital as predictors of students’ cognitive, affective and psychomotor learning outcomes in secondary schools

Abstract

BackgroundPrevious studies assessing students’ learning outcomes and identifying contributing factors have often dwelt on the cognitive domain. Furthermore, school evaluation decisions are often made using scores from cognitive-based tests to rank students. This practice often skews evaluation results, given that education aims to improve the three learning domains. This study addresses this gap by assessing the contributions of four students’ input to their cognitive, affective and psychomotor skills (CAPs).MethodsA cross-section of senior secondary class II students (n = 870), sampled through the multistage procedure, participated in a physical survey. Students’ Inputs Questionnaire (STIQ) and Learning Outcomes Questionnaire (LOQ) were used for data collection. Based on data obtained from a pilot sample (n = 412), principal axis factoring (PAF) was performed to assess the internal structure of the instruments following an oblique rotation. The KMO value of sampling adequacy were 0.88 and 0.94, while the Bartlett’s test of sphericity were significant χ2(253) = 5,010; p < 0.001 and χ2(105) = 3693.38, p < 0.001 for the STIQ and LOQ, respectively. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to assess the models’ acceptability based on the maximum likelihood estimation technique. The main study used hierarchical linear regression for data analysis.ResultsFindings indicated that innate ability, health, motivation and social capital relatively and cumulatively predicted students’ overall, cognitive, affective and psychomotor learning outcomes. The proportion of variance explained by the predictors increased at different levels of the models with the addition of new variables. Students’ social capital reduced the effect of students’ innate ability regardless of their motivation and health status.Conclusion/implicationThis study has provided evidence that the four students’ inputs are crucial predictors of their learning outcomes in the three domains. This result is helpful for school management to provide services aimed at improving the school climate for students’ motivation and social capital. The result can provide policymakers with a proper understanding of the constituents of learning outcomes and how policies can be aligned to secure quality student inputs for maximum productivity in education.

Effectiveness of Project-Based Learning in Metal Welding Technology Course with STEAM Approach in Vocational Education

“…Data collection included an initial needs analysis, pre-treatment pre-test scores, and post-tests after implementing project-based learning with the STEAM approach. The instruments assessed cognitive, affective, and psychomotor abilities [27]. Research indicators, validated by experienced educators with 30-40 years in teaching and researching project-based learning in metal welding technology courses, comprised initial needs data, pretest, treatment, and post-test [28].…”

Family and community inputs as predictors of students overall, cognitive, affective and psychomotor learning outcomes in secondary schools

“…Similarly, students' success has also been attributed to factors within the domain of administrators, such as attitude towards accountability (Lapuz & Pecajas, 2022;Wang et al, 2019), leadership style (Makgato & Mudzanani, 2019;Owan et al, 2020;Winingsih & Sulistiono, 2020), and qualification (Gümüş et al, 2021;Khanal et al, 2020). Other scholars have indicated that students' achievement is related to teachers' subject mastery (Istiqomah et al, 2019;Lawyer, 2019), salaries (García & Han, 2022;Yontz & Wilson, 2021), and social capital (Daly et al, 2020;Owan, Ekpenyong, et al, 2022). Parental involvement, socioeconomic background, community participation, security situation, radius per child, and enrolment per school have also been documented as impacting students' learning outcomes (e.g., Li & Qiu, 2018;Ntitika, 2014;Peteros et al, 2022).…”

“…Under Bloom's taxonomy, learning objectives should be structured to modify learners' cognitive, affective and psychomotor attributes (Bloom, 1994;Bloom et al, 1956;Krathwohl, 2002). Therefore, a complete assessment of students' learning outcomes must focus on three domains to give a better picture of how educational goals are attained (Bassey et al, 2019;Ekpenyong et al, 2022;Owan, Ekpenyong et al, 2022). To bridge the gap in the literature on students' learning outcomes, the cognitive, affective and psychomotor dimensions were all considered in the present study.…”