Academic underachievement of contemporary adolescents: Meanings and causes explanations?
Academic underachievement of contemporary adolescents: Meanings and causes explanations?

Summary/Abstract: Academic underachievement represents an extremely challenging field for educators, school psychologists, parents, researchers and professionals in educational policies. The present paper focuses on the academic underachievement among adolescents. Most children, adolescents or young adults have the ability to learn and reach self-fulfillment, yet many of them are prone to failure in their attempt to reach their own academic potential. A great body of literature shows that defining the underachievement is a hard task, due to the difficulties in delimiting and operationalizing the underlying concepts, as well as the stereotypes and attitudes of the professionals working in education and parents. The main meanings and facets of academic underachievement are reviewed, as well as the explanatory models which emphasize the etiological role of individual, family and school variables.

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