Self-handicapping is a maladaptive strategy that students employ to protect their self-image when they fear or anticipate academic failure. Instead of increasing their effort, students may harm their chances of success by procrastinating, strategically withdrawing effort, or engaging in destructive behaviors like drug abuse, so that potential…

About 10% of students in each years' entrants to medical school will encounter academic failure at some stage in their programme. The usual approach to supporting these students is to offer them short term remedial study programmes that often enhance approaches to study that are orientated towards avoiding failure. In this critical review I will…

Learning analytics and digital badges are emerging research fields in educational science. They both show promise for enhancing student retention in higher education, where withdrawals prior to degree completion remain at about 30% in Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development member countries. This integrative review provides an…

An examination of the dynamics of academic failure is presented in this monograph in the form of an annotated bibliography of current literature. The writings cited offer a cross-section of research on what factors affect students' choices of adaptive or maladaptive behavior patterns in the classroom and in relation to their peers. Section one of…

This booklet synthesizes principles of motivation that have emerged from research examining the effect of motivational practices on school learning. It addresses achievement motivation, intrinsic motivation, goal orientation, and the effect of teacher practices on the promotion of motivational beliefs, motivation strategies, and willpower. It also…

An ecological-systems view is presented describing academic underachievement in highly verbal, gifted adolescents. It is argued that a unique pattern of interests, motives, and cognitive styles results in a differential pattern of achievement for these youth. Implications for psychoeducational assessment, pedagogy, and counseling are discussed.…

Explores motivation as a requisite to the educational goal of maximum development of all children's intellectual potential. Considers (1) causal attributions of success and failure and (2) attribution for task choice and involvement, in relation to, respectively, (1) inequality and (2) equality of optimum motivation in schools. (Author/GC)

Adolescence involves multiple academic changes and increased challenges with potential dramatic effects on student motivation and learning. This chapter focuses on the influence of one motivational process, perceived self-efficacy. The chapter provides background information on self-efficacy related to the larger theoretical framework of human…

Research regarding the promotion or retention of students has shown consistently that non-promotion is not an aid to pupil achievement, personal development, or motivation. Alternative strategies for dealing with underachievers are discussed. (PP)

Suggests that music education by its nature is well suited to meeting the special needs of at-risk students. Discusses the role of music in motivating and enabling students to succeed. Defines the causes of failure as inability and lack of desire to learn when at-risk students receive the wrong kind of instruction. (DK)

An examination is made into the possible reasons for underachievement in higher education, on the theory that personological variables such as persistence and diplomacy may contribute as much to success as I.Q. points. Various lists are provided of the salient factors, and their explanations, that contribute to underachievement, as proposed by…

This review examines the impact of future goals on motivation and learning in multicultural classrooms. Across cultures, schooling is a future-oriented investment. Studies of minority students' school achievement have advanced future goals as a crucial protective factor in the face of frequent school failure. At the same time, cultural…

Examines why a literature-based multicultural curriculum failed to engage students from a predominately white, working-class middle school in the South in discussing racism. Results from an ethnographic study indicate that this failure was primarily the result of dominant mainstream beliefs embedded in the institution of schooling and in the…

Summarizes research concerning the long-range effects of teachers' controlling strategies and children's motivational orientations on achievement-related behaviors. Evidence suggests that children with an extrinsic motivation toward schoolwork suffer from important deficits that are influenced by teaching strategy. Research findings are discussed…

To better understand the effect of student background, work load, and attitudes on performance in intermediate algebra, a study was conducted in summer 1990 among students at a central Texas community college using pre- and post-course questionnaires completed by 124 of 157 students in 8 sections of intermediate algebra. Respondents were…