doiSerbia

The identity of an underachiever student as an outcome of social relations

Milošević Nikoleta (Institut za pedagoška istraživanja, Beograd)

The paper deals with various performance factors in underachiever students primarily juvenile delinquents who reported declining levels of achievement throughout the duration of corrective out-of-institution measures. This raises the question: Why is there a decline in school achievement of juvenile delinquents during the treatment which is essentially aimed at improving school performance. What causes this? In the search for an answer we considered various approaches for the determination of the identity of a juvenile delinquent, underaching at school. The author takes issue with traditional views on identity and changes the focus from an individual over to the interaction between an individual and society. It is argued that poor school performance should be placed in the context of social relations; the author suggests that problems faced by underachievers at school only accidentally stem from what they can or cannot do, rather, the root of the problem lies in the manner other people relate to them. It is necessary that a teacher should realize that students are social beings in behavioral experiments who have individualities and that their personal characteristics stem from their relations with other people. A teacher is expected to attempt to construct the manner in which a student views himself and the world around himself, that is, to enter a "role relationship" with him.

Keywords: identity, social context, social relations, academic achievement