Academic performance and assessment

Scholars agree that students’ academic achievement is a ‘net result’ of their cognitive and non-cognitive attributes (Lee & Shute, 2010; Lee & Stankov, 2016) as well as the sociocultural context in which the learning process takes place (Liem & McInerney, 2018; Liem & Tan, 2019). The present issue comprises eight papers that look into the extent to which various cognitive, non-cognitive or psychological, and contextual factors contribute to the academic achievement of learners with various sociodemographic and sociocultural backgrounds. In a longitudinal study following Finnish young children from kindergarten to Grade 2, Kyttälä, Kanerva, Munter, and Björn (2019) provide compelling evidence that, although the individual progress of working memory skills is relatively stable during this period of development, verbal and visuospatial aspects of the children’s working memory develop relatively independently. Further, working memory skills at kindergarten is predictive of academic performance at Grade 2, with the verbal aspect of working memory as a more powerful predictor than the visuospatial aspect of working memory. Clearly, these findings suggest that interventions designed to facilitate the development of working memory or to address poor working memory skills should be done early, even before the start of primary school.

Structural equation modeling (SEM) or other more specific techniques under this statistical method (e.g. latent mean and path analyses) have indeed been an analytic approach with growing popularity. This is evidenced in the next four studies with adult-aged learners in this issue. In a study with undergraduate students in the Dominican Republic, Gutiérrez and Tomás (2019) investigated the relationships between autonomy support, self-efficacy, school engagement, and three indicators of academic and non-academic wellbeing. Their SEM shows that the effects of perceived teachers’ autonomy support on life satisfaction, school satisfaction and academic performance are mediated by self-efficacy and school engagement. In addition to its indirect effects, perceived teachers’ autonomy support also directly predict life and school satisfaction. Together, not only do the findings support the key propositions of self-determination theory, but they also highlight the importance of teaching practices that seriously take students’ perspectives into account and these practices include ones that consider various student factors such as levels of ability interests, or learning preferences.

In a study with Canadian undergraduate students, Quinn-Nilas, Kennett, and Maki (2019) test a hypothesis that academic resourcefulness acts as a mediator in the link between explanatory styles for failure and academic grades in two groups of students (direct entry and transfer students). Latent mean analysis shows that, compared with transfer students, direct entry students are more likely to attribute their academic disappointments to a lack of effort, bad luck, and a lack of personal ability. Notwithstanding these differences, path analysis shows a similar attributional process for both groups. In this process, ‘lack of effort’ and ‘task difficulty’ negatively predict academic resourcefulness, whereas ‘not lack of personal ability’ positively predicts academic resourcefulness which, in turn, predicts academic grades. Students in both groups, however, do not see ‘bad luck’ as an attribution factor, which makes them more or less academically resourceful. Beyond the importance of helping students see an association between effort and achievement, Quinn-Nilas et al. believe in the value of self-management and academic success courses to coach students effective strategies to do well in their studies.

In a study of Spanish undergraduates, Vizoso, Arias, and Rodríguez Pérez (2019) investigate if the effects of optimism and coping strategies on academic performance are mediated by academic burnout. Adaptive coping negatively predict emotional exhaustion and cynicism and positively predicts academic efficacy. In contrast, maladaptive coping positively predict emotional exhaustion and cynicism and negatively predicts academic efficacy which in turn positively predicts grade point averages. These findings hold important educational implications that training programs are designed to equip students with adaptive coping skills, such as problem-focused coping, cognitive restructuring, seeking emotional and social support and to help them learn how to manage their academic stress have the potential to do well in enhancing students’ academic performance.

In view of its documents benefits for academic outcomes, mindfulness practice has now gained growing attention in educational settings (Bender, Roth, Zielenski, Longo, & Chermak, 2018). Departing from the more traditional non-cognitive, psychological predictors of performance shown in the previous papers, Elphinstone, Whitehead, Tinker, and Bates (2019) focus their investigation on the role of mindfulness in fostering academic performance in a sample of Australian undergraduates. Specifically, the study shows that the effects of mindfulness on final grades are mediated by the extent to which students are academically engaged, able to adapt, and able to let go (non-attachment). Adaptability and non-attachment also positively predict academic engagement which, in turn, predicts academic performance. Given the significant role of non-attachment in this cognitive process, Elphinstone et al. believe that the benefits of mindfulness interventions for educational outcomes may be heightened when students also learn to let go and to adapt their cognitive, behavioural, and affective resources as they navigate their daily academic lives.

Performance anxiety is a key factor that contributes to student performance. Núñez-Peña and Bono (2019) examine the relationships between trait, mathematics, and test anxieties and achievement in a group of Spanish undergraduates who undertake courses with a high amount of mathematical contents. The study shows that higher levels of mathematics anxiety are associated with lower course grades, whereas higher levels of test anxiety are associated with a higher number of errors in a multiple choice test. These results underscore the importance of interventions seeking to reduce academic anxiety, especially when students are facing a mathematics test. The authors propose that interventions that specifically ask students to write down their worries before a test, guide students to do a brief focused breathing exercise before a test and ask students to change the way they interpret physically arousing responses they experience during a test situation, could do well in helping students alleviate their anxiety related to mathematics.

Assessment as learning, which is a type of assessment that involves students to assess their own learning process and product, is a viable way to promote students’ meta-cognitive skills because students are able to help themselves monitor their learning progress. In a quasi-experimental design conducted with American high school students, Jax, Ahn, and Lin-Siegler (2019) seek to test if contrasting case-based instructional supports facilitate the students’ accuracy in self-assessment and academic performance in physics. The study specifically compares three groups of students who are provided with (1) content knowledge and contrasting good and poor solutions, (2) with content knowledge and good solutions only, and (3) with content knowledge only. Students in the contrasting case group improve the accuracy of their self-assessment, the mastery of their content learning and the development of their self-assessment strategies. These researchers believe that designing contrasting case examples and providing students with grading rubric – and incorporate them into instruction – are a promising pedagogical approach to promoting the quality of student learning and, in turn, achievement.

The capacity to view social issues with justice is an important cognitive competency for health or helping professionals (e.g. those in counselling, psychology, nursing, medicine, and education). In their paper, Marszalek, Barber, and Nilsson (2019) report on the development of the Social Issues Advocacy Scale (SIAS) which comprises four subscales: political awareness, political and social advocacy, confronting discrimination, and social issue awareness. They then use participants’ scores on the SIAS to establish latent profiles of students differing on their social issues related perspectives as well as to describe the profiles of SIAS dimensions according to the degrees that students pursue, the fields of study that students are in and the political orientations that students are affiliated to. Their study shows that the SIAS is a valid and reliable tool that promises invaluable information for the training and trainers in nurturing ‘social justice advocacy’ as a core competency that health and helping professionals are expected to acquire and bring into their respective professions.

In summary, each of the above studies has not only made a significant contribution to our understanding about the role of cognitive, non-cognitive, and contextual factors in student achievement, but they have also provided a springboard in bringing this area of research to a greater height. I believe you will enjoy reading this issue and appreciate the insights from each of the papers!

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.