There are many reasons for underachievement by a student (normal, gifted). Reasons could be BIOLOGICAL, (poor vision, hearing, etc), PSYCHOLOGICAL (lack of reinforcement, peer pressure, distractions, etc), or SOCIOCULTURAL (socioeconomic status, education of parent, etc).

Academic underachievement occurs when the student performs poorer than expected performance (poorer than might have been predicted from intelligence tests) in school / academics.

The STUDENT underachievement shows up in following ways:
? Repeated failure to complete school or homework assignments on time.
? Academic performance is below the student’s intelligence.
? Heightened anxiety that interferes with student’s performance during tests.
? Depression and low self-esteem that contribute to academic underachievement.
? Poor organization or study skills that contribute to academic performance.

The REASONS for underachievement could be:
? Lack of self-discipline. Depression or low self-esteem.
? Power struggle/Passive aggressive.
? Exposed to chaotic environment.
? Has become lazy. Has repeated school failures. Poor study skills.
? Poor vision, hearing, speech problem (adding to low self-esteem)
? Low socio-economic status leading to lack of facilities.
? Less educated parents, due to which proper guidance at home is not given to the child.
? Lack of reinforcement.
? Peer pressure

The HELP for underachievement:
? Six factors having a positive impact on their academic performance:
o out-of-school interests,
o parents,
o goals associated with academic achievement,
o classroom instruction and curriculum,
o the teacher, and
o Changes in self.

? Refer the student for a hearing, vision and medical examination.
? Remove emotional impediments or environmental stressors in order to improve academic performance.
? Encourage parents to maintain regular (at least weekly) communication with teachers to help the student remain organized and keep up with

assignments.
? Parents implement intervention strategies to help student keep up with school work
? Set short and long term goals.
? Complete school assignments on a consistent basis
? Discuss your (student’s) negative attitude toward school. Focus on changing that attitude.
? Take help from teacher or school counselor to reduce anxiety related to taking tests.
? Know your learning style. Learn effective study skills (study in quiet places, develop outlines, highlight important details, etc.)
? Monitor academic progress. Discuss accomplishments and setbacks.
? Use planners to record school assignments and plan ahead for long-term projects.
? Give praise and positive reinforcements for academic success. You can celebrate (pamper yourself your success on your own too when you achieve your short term goals.
? Engage in extra curricular activities, outside interest (can provide an “escape” from what the students determined to be less-than-favorable school situations) the area of interest can be an outlet for your frustrations.
? Perceive academic success in school as a source of personal satisfaction and a matter of personal responsibility.
? Be patient. It will take time to reverse the patterns of underachievement. “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow.” Try until you succeed.

A. Development
Physical growth & development
Mental growth and development
Emotional development
Social development
DEVELOPMENT
Development, as applied to the various areas of behavior, is characteristic of human nature from conception throughout life.
The prenatal period, childhood, and adolescence usually are referred to as representing sequential maturation or development toward adult maturity.
The habitual behavior patterns and understandings acquired during these developing years are aimed at serving the individual effectively in his life activities and relationship.

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The term development and learning sometimes are used synonymously. Their connotation differ, however, in that learning mastery in any area is dependent upon development readiness to profit from exposure to incidental or planned learning stimulating situations

PHYSICAL GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT
The individual as an active, productive member of his group is first and foremost a physical being.
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Consequently, any program of learning that is organized for his benefit must not only be geared to his progressive stages of physical growth but also be aimed at providing educational media that will make possible for him the development of excellent body symmetry, good health, and effective activity of the neuromuscular system that will help him live long and successfully.
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1.GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT
growth VS development
importance of physical development
Measures
2.SPECIFIC GROWTH CHANGES
height and weight
body proportion
growth of internal organs
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3.ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES AND PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT
4.EDUCATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT
MENTAL GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT
EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
An emotion is an effective experience that accompanies generalized inner adjustment and mental physiological stirred up states in the individual, and that shows in his overt behavior.
Functions of emotion in life
Effects upon behavior
Causes of emotional stress
Emotional maturity
~>A study on the relationship between aggression and achievement in chemistry of XI standard students.
A study on the relationship between aggression and achievement in chemistry of XI standard students.
By T.Parimala
N=314, 108 girls & 206 boys
Aggression Questionnaire by G.B.Patti
Achievement test in chemistry by researcher.
RESULTS revealed that there is a negative relationship between aggression and achievement meaning that students who are less aggressive shall achieve better and there is a significant difference between boys and girls in both aggression and achievement.
SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
Social development refers to the long-term changes in relationships and interactions involving self, peers, and family. It includes both positive changes, such as how friendships develop, and negative changes, such as aggression or bullying.

For teachers, the social developments that are the most obviously relevant to classroom life fall into three main areas: 1) changes in self-concept and in relationships among students and teachers, 2) changes in basic needs or personal motives, and 3) changes in your sense of rights and responsibilities.

As with cognitive development, each of these areas has a broad, well-known theory (and theorist) that provides a framework for thinking about the area as it relates to teaching.

B. Individual differences
Definition
Types
Distribution

INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
Each student is an individual and ultimately must be treated as such.
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Beyond the generalities of learning and motivation, Educational psychology must deal with the fact that people differ.
Differences among students reflect more than developmental factors, like differences in creativity, intelligence, motivation, language, and writing skill.
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Individual differences have fascinated and challenged parents and teachers throughout history and became a subject matter of educational psychologist after Sir Francis Galton’s (1869) investigation.
Q. What are the important characteristics on which student differ?
Q. What are their implications for individual treatment?
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To deal with these complexities, we have developed descriptive labels and associated measurement methods that allow us to describe students with respect to –
Social class & socio economic status
IQ
Gender
Cognitive styles
Creativity
Exceptionality
Ethnicity and culture
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OPPOSITION to such labeling
Many labels are demeaning and appear to produce undesirable self-fulfilling-prophecy effects.
Labeling as MEANINGFUL and HELPING
Linkage between labels and remedial procedures.
However linkages between labels and clear-cut remedial procedure are not so clear.
The value of labels, even so called “diagnostic” ones, depends not only on their accuracy but on the degree to which they provide guidance for remediation to the implied problem.
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Socioeconomic status
Social class
Socio economic status
~> Children with learning disabilities in relation to different ecological factors. **
By Chandra Kala Singh & Bimla Dhanda
N=60, age-group was 6 to 8 yr
Tools: McCarthy(1970) scales of children ability, Visual Motor Integration test (VMI) directionality subtest.
Self structured Interview of mothers of these children.
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RESULT: It was observed that the parents who were not able to provide their children with good recourses, proper care, academic and play material suffered from two or more learning disability.
Parents also had opinion that due to lack of resources, education and motivation, they could not provide their children healthy environment for learning.
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IQ
IQ tests
School success VS intelligence
Changing IQs
Type of intellectual abilities
Transfer of skills

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Sex roles
Differences in intellectual functioning
Differential effects of praise and criticism
~> When being a girl matters less: Accessibility of gender-related self knowledge in single-sex and coeducational classes and its impact on students physics related self-concept of ability.
By Ursula Kessels & Bettina Hannover
N=401, eight graders from coeducational school
Method: random assignments of student to single sex VS coeducational physics classes throughout the eighth grade.
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At the end of the year, students’ physics related self concept of ability was measured using a questionnaire. The accessibility of gender related self-knowledge during physics classes was accessed by measuring latencies and endorsement of sex typed trait adjectives.
RESULTS: Girls from single sex physics classes reported a better physics related self-concept of ability than girls from coeducational classes, while boys’ self concept of ability did not vary according to class composition. For both boys and girls, Gender-related self-knowledge was less accessible in single-sex classes than in mixed-sex classes. To the extent that girls feminine self-knowledge was relatively less accessible than their masculine self-knowledge, their physics related self concept of ability improved at the end of the school year.
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CONCLUSION: By revealing the importance of the differential accessibility of gender-related self knowledge in single-and mixed-sex setting, our study clarifies why single-sex schooling helps adolescents to gain a better self-concept of ability in school subjects that are considered inappropriate for their own sex.
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Cognitive Styles
Conceptual tempo: a) impulsive b) reflective
Psychological differentiation: a) field dependent b) field independent.
Creativity
Measures
Fostering creativity in classroom
~> Comparative study among juvenile delinquents and normal children in relation to different dimensions of creativity.
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By Dharpal Singh Yadav & Grijesh Kumar
N=200 normal children, N=100 juvenile delinquents
Tools: verbal and non verbal Torrance Tests of creative thinking
RESULT: Juvenile delinquents differ significantly on different dimensions of figural and verbal creativity such as flexibility and originality where as fluency did not show any difference.
The major findings of this research is that though the children are delinquent but their performance on creativity test were almost identical with non delinquent children and this will prove beneficial for development of delinquent children.
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Students with handicaps or special needs
Exceptionality
Mentally disabled **
Physically disabled
Gifted

Stairs handicap a person who uses a wheelchair
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Ethnicity and culture
Caste
Class
Ecology
Culture
Rural/Urban

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With respect to social equity motive, the problem centers on inequality in academic achievement associated with children from ethnic groups and the inability of schools to provide access to equal educational opportunities.

“Instructions may be delivered in the same way to all children and still not be equal.”
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Belonging to a particular caste or group is important because the traditions established in homes are the experiential background instrumental in engineering later development which will influence school learning.

The scheduled-caste children appeared to suffer from a crisis of personality orientation (Gupta, 1979; Chitnis and Naidu, 1981). In the case of these children value conflict often came in the way of educational progress besides curriculum and instruction problems (Kulshreshtha, 1983).

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Class membership and ecology imposed structural and functional constraints in the case of different groups of tribal children. School as a social institution is a comparatively new environment for tribal children.

The tribal child starts with near zero linguistic information and conceptualization when he enters school (Panda, 1988).

Ethnicity in the form of tribal origin failed to bring differences in intellectual functioning as measured by intelligence tests (Sinha, R.R.P., 1964; Chaudhuri & Sinha, 1959) but rural and urban differences in the same ethnic group were predominant in intelligence and other adjustment behavior (Sinha, R.R.P., 1964; Nomani, 1965).

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Ecological variables were studied by Mishra (1983). The sample consisted of urban, rural and tribal children drawn from socially disadvantaged and advantaged categories. The effects of disadvantage on achievement and adjustment were more prominent in the urban setup than in the rural set-up, probably because the urban set-up is more advanced and. complex.

Extent of individual differencesis represented by a normal curve, not bimodal or multimodal curves.
References:

1) Crow, L.D., and Crow, A., (1963). Educational Psychology. New York, Van Nostrand Reinhold Company.
2) Skinner, C.E.,(1996). Educational Psychology. New Delhi, Prentice Hall.
3) Berliner, D.C., and Calfee, R.C. (1996).Handbook of Educational Psychology. USA, McMillan Library Reference, Prentice Hall.
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4) Ashok, S., (2008). Parent Child Interaction and Academic Achievement in Kindergarten, Primary and Middle School. Indian Journal of Applied Psychology, 45, 11-15.
5) Parimala, T., (2008). A study on the relationship between aggression and achievement in chemistry of eleventh standard students. Indian Journal of Applied Psychology, 45, 16-20.

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6) Kessels, U., and Hannover, B., (2008). When being a girl matters less: Accessibility of gender related self knowledge in single sex and coeducational classes and its impact on student’s physics related self-concept of ability. British journal of Educational Psychology, 78, 273-289
7) Singh, C.K., and Dhanda, B., (2008). Children with Learning Disabilities in relation to Different Ecological Factors. Disabilities and Impairments: An interdisciplinary Research Journal, 22, 24-28..
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Yadav, D.S., and Kumar, G., (2008). Comparative study among juvenile delinquents and normal children in relation to different dimensions of creativity. Disabilities and Impairments: an interdisciplinary Research Journal, 22, 43-48.
9) K.C. Panda. Research on Psychology of Education a trend report. Retrieved August 27, 2008 from http://education.nic.in/cd50years/g/Z/9I/0Z9I0903.htm

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10) Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection (2007 August 10). Contemporary Educational Psychology/Chapter 3: Student Development/Social Development: Relationships and Personal Motives. Retrieved August 23, 2008 from http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Contemporary_Educational_Psychology/Chapter_3:_Student_Development/Social_Development:_Relationships_and_Personal_Motives

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11) Good, T.L., and Brophy, J.E.,(1980). Educational Psychology: A realistic approach. Library of Congress cataloging in Publication Data.

UNDERSTANDING can save…letting the hope float…

S.P.K.S