Abstract
For years educators have attempted to identify the effective predictors of scholastic achievement and several personality variables were described as significantly correlated with grade performance. Since one of the crucial practical implications of identifying the factors involved in academic achievement is to facilitate the teaching-learning process, the main variables that have been associated with achievement should be investigated simultaneously in order to provide information as to their relative merit in the population examined. In contrast with this premise, limited research has been conducted on the importance of personality traits and self-esteem on scholastic achievement. To this aim in a sample of 439 subjects (225 males) with an average age of 12.36 years (SD= .99) from three first level secondary school classes of Southern Italy, personality traits, as defined by the Five Factor Model, self-esteem and socioeconomic status were evaluated. The academic results correlated significantly both with personality traits and with some dimensions of self-esteem. Moreover, hierarchical regression analyses brought to light, in particular, the predictive value of openness to experience on academic marks. The results, stressing the multidimensional nature of academic performance, indicate a need to adopt complex approaches for undertaking action addressing students’ difficulties in attaining good academic achievement.
Highlights
Investigation of the factors at the basis of scholastic achievement is at the centre of one of the areas of research of major interest for education psychology because of its considerable implications for both learning and teaching
Poropat[1] stresses that the possibility of predicting academic success takes on a significant connotation in the 34 countries of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) where an average of 6.2% of gross domestic product is spent on education
Among these particular importance is attributed to cognitive ability [2], gender [3,4], motivation to succeed [5,6], family socio-economic status [7,8], parental involvement in scholastic activity [9], class group composition [10]
Summary
Investigation of the factors at the basis of scholastic achievement is at the centre of one of the areas of research of major interest for education psychology because of its considerable implications for both learning and teaching. The characteristics of the scholastic experience and the relative achievement are described as the product of the dynamic interaction of a hierarchy of factors. Among these particular importance is attributed to cognitive ability [2], gender [3,4], motivation to succeed [5,6], family socio-economic status [7,8], parental involvement in scholastic activity [9], class group composition [10]. There is considerable evidence describing the relationship between personality and academic success, coming from differing theoretical models of reference which measure differing aspects of personality. Other studies which use the Five Factor Model (FFM) for describing the personality, emphasize the role of Big Five personality traits in predicting academic achievement [5,12,13,19,20,21,22,23]
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