Improving Academic Achievement: Impact of Psychological Factors on Education

by Joshua Aronson (Editor)

Social psychological research has revealed much about how personal and interpersonal factors impact academic achievement. The research has been reported in several different outlets but has never before been condensed in an easy to read, engaging book, targeting the hot topics of coffee table debates. This book does just that, offering review chapters by the most influential researchers of today, written for an audience of educational and cognitive psychologists as well as school administrators, teachers, policy makers, and parents. Section one focuses on what motivates students, how self-esteem affects the learning process, the consequences of achievement goals, the effects of student attributions of success and failure, self-handicapping, methods of strategic learning, and how to successfully use one's intelligence. Section two discusses how the offering of rewards may affect achievement, how teacher expectations may affect student performance, the effects of stereotypes, feedback, and social rejection. There's also a discussion of effective means of turning at-risk students into scholars, and how students can successfully traverse transitions to middle school.

Genres: Education

395 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2002

Reviews

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A deeply, deeply interesting book. Each essay aims to both explain a theory and offer related practical advice, in a readable form, and are followed by "questions from teachers" in order to clarify how to apply the concept to the classroom when it isn't obvious. The essays are divided into 2 broad categories: the "classics," theories that are known to hold and for which the results have been proven and re-confirmed in hundreds of studies, as well as more recent (still solid!) theories. The topics are varied and interesting: the pygmalion effect, motivation, self-handicapping, effective 1-on-1 tutoring, building empathy, stereotype threat, the jigsaw classroom... I know I will keep this book close-by and use it as a reference.

[Bushra]

here m the students of numl, and m a research student. kindly allow me to read this book

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every educator should read this book. And should you have the opportunity to see Aronson speak -- go!