Correlates of Academic Performance of Adolescents: Perspectives of Personality Characteristics

The academic performance of students from socially disadvantaged communities has been the prime concern of scholars from the disciplines of Education, Psychology and Psychiatry over the past three decades. The efforts to remedy this have, however, not yielded any sustainable results. Generally, when the academic performance is poor, the school resources and support systems are blamed. It was observed in one such population, that the academic achievement of students in some schools remained high while that of others in the same locality remained low despite the provision of same support services. Further, the researcher’s experiences suggested that the disadvantaged schools whose students continuously performed well were guided by effective environment at schools in terms of promoting all round development rather than emphasizing only on academic pursuits. The purpose of this research therefore, was to identify the role of personality make-up on academic performance, skills and attitudes employed by teachers and parents of disadvantaged children. In the present study, an attempt has been made to analyze the impact of personality characteristics on academic pursuits, mediated by environmental pressures and process of coping mechanisms adopted by children studying in public school systems. The case study method was applied on 5 children studying in high school. They were administered the High School Personality Questionnaire originally createdby Cattel, followed by indepth analysis of parenting style, affective structure of family and process of coping mechanism evolved by the children for the attribution of under achievement. The results have been conceptualized into cognizable factors that are contributing to their personality adversely and in turn affecting their academic performance. The results also suggest that on the one hand the academic achievement is correlated with personality factors; on the other hand, the environmental stress perceived by students influenced directly, their academic achievement and their personality attributes.