Title of the study
Undermined Academic Potentials: A Multi-Level Study of the Main Psychosocial Factors that Contribute to Palestinian Sixth-Grade Children’s Academic Underachievement in the Gaza Strip.
In Palestine and particularly in Gaza Strip, the decline in the rate of children’s academic achievement has reached a critical point. The UNRWA has reported that the decline in pass rates among 6th-graders between 1999/2000 and 2004/2005 is about 30% in different subjects. Without understanding the factors behind this phenomenon and, accordingly, planning and implementing effective intervention, further decline in children’s pass rates is expected. This could lead to an increase in children’s dropout rates which composes a serious threat to social and economic stability on both individual and society levels.
This study suggests that the decline in students’ pass rates (academic underachievement) may have been influenced by interacting psychosocial factors related to the child, home, school, and society levels that have undermined the children’s academic potentials. So, the study explores the multi-level psychosocial factors contributing to academic underachievement in sixth grade Palestinian students in Gaza Strip, employing a cross-sectional survey design.
The results showed that several factors on the personal, home, school and cross-systems levels were associated with academic underachievement. On the personal characteristics level, high hyperactivity/inattention, low self-esteem, and low use of cognitive strategies have significantly predicted academic underachievement. On the external factors level, fathers’ low education, parents’ high psychological control, parents’ high scholastic discouraging behavior, high rivalry in siblings’ relationships, and high loneliness in peer social relations have significantly predicted academic underachievement. The students’ high exposure to variety of major stressful life events was nearly significance in predicting their academic underachievement. On the combined personal and external factors’ level, low self-esteem, high sibling rivalry, and high loneliness in peer social relations have predicted academic underachievement while high hyperactivity/inattention, low fathers’ education, and high parents’ scholastic discouraging behaviors were nearly significant in predicting academic underachievement.
In conclusion, the results support the main assumption of this study that academic underachievement is multidimensional and multi-level factors contribute to its development, in line with the bioecological theory. Services and intervention programs should be set up to prevent and reverse the Palestinian students’ underachievement, with consolidated, consistent efforts and cooperation between school and home, backed up by the educational system and community programs. Suggested intervention strategies include: collaborative teaching in the classroom, adaptation of academic tasks and curriculums, individual and group counseling with child and family, peer-to-peer cooperation, and awareness or educational meetings for parents. The International Child Development Program (ICDP) could be a useful tool to use in improving the quality of the parent-child interaction and communication, and thereby support the development of the child’s abilities.