Helping children achieve more in school

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-12/f-hca120716.php

Public Release: 7-Dec-2016
Helping children achieve more in school
Study shows learning strategies are key to academic achievement and describe behavioural interventions that could reverse underachievement
Frontiers

Not all children do well in school, despite being intellectually capable. Whilst parental relationships, motivation and self-concept all have a role to play, a recent study published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology shows that children's learning strategy is key for academic success.

The study showed that students with normal scores on intellectual tests but that have poor grades in secondary school are also not as good at acquiring and retaining information, or later applying it.

Lead researcher of the study and professor at the University of Alicante in Spain, Juan Castejón, concludes that underachieving students appear to employ all of the learning strategies considered, but to a lesser extent than normal and overachieving students, and this seems to be the key for academic success.

"The underachievers group of students also has poorer attitudes to learning goals, poorer relationships with their parents, and lower emotional stability than their peers," says Castejón, "but learning strategies showed the strongest relationship with achievement."

By comparing underachievers with normal- or over-achievers, the work brings new insight on how educational interventions may help those in academic difficulty.

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