Abstract
The aim of this study was to assess the predictive capacity of some of the most relevant cognitive skills pertaining to the academic field as measured by the Spanish Primary School Aptitude Test Battery. This psychometric tool was applied to all students who were enrolled in the final year of Early Childhood Education (631 students) in the public schools of the province of Alicante (in the South-East of Spain) and a follow-up of their academic progress was carried out when they completed Primary Education (6 school years). The results obtained show that medium-high and high scores in Verbal Aptitude and Numerical Aptitude tests in Early Childhood Education (5 years of age), can predict academic success at the end of Primary Education (12 years of age) in instrumental subjects such as: (1) Language (Verbal Aptitude Odds Ratio = 1.39 and Numerical Aptitude Odds Ratio = 1.39) and (2) Mathematics (Verbal Aptitude Odds Ratio = 1.47 and Numerical Aptitude Odds Ratio = 1.52). We have determined the importance of developing pedagogical programs that stimulate the development of these skills during Early Childhood Education, while implementing support strategies during Primary Education, for those students who present underdeveloped aptitudes in these areas. In this way, school difficulties would be prevented in the instrumental subjects that provide access to other academic areas.
Highlights
The starting point for the present study was a certainty in the knowledge that academic difficulties do not suddenly appear without warning, but that they develop throughout the early stages of the teaching-learning process (Kern and Friedman, 2009; Garon-Carrier et al, 2018)
During Primary Education the probability that students do not fail the subject of Language, is higher for each incremental point in the result obtained in the following indices: Verbal Aptitude (39%), Numerical Aptitude (47%), Spatial Orientation (20%), Auditory Memory by (23%), Visomotricity (23%), Reading and Writing Maturity (13%), and Total Score (11%), for the entire sample and by entering the variables one by one
The most relevant conclusion of this study is the finding that a psychometric tool such as Spanish Primary School Aptitude Test (AEI) presents an adequate capacity to predict academic success or failure in the instrumental subjects of Mathematics and Language
Summary
The starting point for the present study was a certainty in the knowledge that academic difficulties do not suddenly appear without warning, but that they develop throughout the early stages of the teaching-learning process (Kern and Friedman, 2009; Garon-Carrier et al, 2018). In the body of literature on the field of educational research, academic performance is presented as worthy of constant concern Over the years, it seems that there has been a change in the focus of these studies and currently the emphasis is on finding causal relationships between academic performance and different variables that may be the subject of research on intervention programs, such as math skills, language skills, spatial orientation, memory, or cognitive and psychomotor maturity to develop reading and writing skills (Risso et al, 2010; Alloway and Passolunghi, 2011; Phillipson and Phillipson, 2012; Cheng and Mix, 2014; Bonti and Tzouriadou, 2015; Geary and VanMarie, 2016; Hill et al, 2016; Park et al, 2016; Pitchford et al, 2016; Serpell and Esposito, 2016; Cornu et al, 2017). To our knowledge, in the body of specialized literature the definition of academic performance is understood to be the learning out come in the student and generated by the pedagogical intervention of the teacher, keeping in mind that this performance cannot be the product of a single aptitude, but is the result of the symbiosis of a sum of elements that act upon, and emanate from, the person who learns (Córdoba et al, 2011; Miñano and Castejón, 2011; Moliner et al, 2012; García-Fernández et al, 2013; Grivins, 2013; Meneses-Botina et al, 2013; Duckworth and Yeager, 2015)
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