Intrapersonal Factors and Skills
While much of the debate about student academic success revolves around the place of school, curriculum and teachers, some researchers (and this practitioner), believing these factors are external, will cite evidence that the most important success factors are those that reside in the mind and heart of children themselves. This view claims that without inner motivation to learn, whether stimulated by individual aspirations or family and cultural expectations, children do not engage themselves in their learning. Even if they are given the best schools and curriculum with outstanding teachers, children who are detached from the learning process gain little.
For discussion sake, we can call these inner, hidden factors, intrapersonal. Although we could list many such factors, I would like to focus on three that experience and research support as central.
The first relates to a child’s belief and confidence in the value and importance of good education. Laurence Steinberg refers to research showing that even at a young age a child must be helped to see the connection between obtaining a good education and the quality of life they will have in the future. Statistical data for economic, social, and personal betterment overwhelmingly support this view. Adults must help children see the connection between children’s elementary, middle school and high school curriculum with future prospects. The correlation is not always direct, say between fifth grade language arts and a medical profession, but the need to become academically competent and capable of continued learning are inescapable necessities of the 21st Century.
The second of these hidden, inner skills is a healthy attribution style. Bernard Weiner (UCLA) and Carol Dweck (Stanford) point out that children often draw premature and erroneous conclusions that they are “smart in math, but not in writing.” Children see their academic success or failure in terms of absolutes. In this context a child either is, or is not, able. On the other hand, children who are taught that effort and attitude play the most important part in their learning, will develop healthier attributions believing that learning and succeeding in school is within their own control and hence, if they improve their effort, they will improve their performance.
Finally, children who develop metacognitive skills are more able to adapt their efforts and attitudes toward academic achievement. A simple definition of metacognitive skills (at least as they occur in a school setting) identifies those abilities by which children process their school experiences, understanding why they failed or succeeded, determining what they need to do to remedy problems or improve their work, and devising an action plan that offers hope of advancement. This final point could find scholarly backing in the work of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs and Kazimierz Dabrowsky’s theory of positive integration.
By Charles Debelak
