Academic Achievements

Academic Achievement

Adolescents spend more waking time in school than in any other context (Eccles & Roeser, 2011). Academic achievement during adolescence is predicted by interpersonal (e.g., parental engagement in adolescents’ education), intrapersonal (e.g., intrinsic motivation), and institutional (e.g., school quality) factors. Academic achievement is important in its own right as a marker of positive adjustment during adolescence but also because academic achievement sets the stage for future educational and occupational opportunities. The most serious consequence of school failure, particularly dropping out of school, is the high risk of unemployment or underemployment in adulthood that follows. High achievement can set the stage for college or future vocational training and opportunities.

Outside Resources

Podcasts: Society for Research on Adolescence website with links to podcasts on a variety of topics, from autonomy-relatedness in adolescence, to the health ramifications of growing up in the United States.

http://www.s-r-a.org/sra-news/podcasts

Study: The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) is a longitudinal study of a nationally representative sample of adolescents in grades 7-12 in the United States during the 1994-95 school year. Add Health combines data on respondents’ social, economic, psychological and physical well-being with contextual data on the family, neighborhood, community, school, friendships, peer groups, and romantic relationships.

http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/addhealth

Video: This is a series of TED talks on topics from the mysterious workings of the adolescent brain, to videos about surviving anxiety in adolescence.

http://tinyurl.com/lku4a3k

Web: UNICEF website on adolescents around the world. UNICEF provides videos and other resources as part of an initiative to challenge common preconceptions about adolescence.

http://www.unicef.org/adolescence/index.html

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Authors

Jennifer Lansford

Jennifer E. Lansford is a Research Professor at the Duke University Center for Child and Family Policy and Social Science Research Institute. Her work focuses on the development of aggression and other behavior problems in children and adolescents, emphasizing how family, peer, and cultural contexts affect these outcomes.

Creative Commons License

Adolescent Development by Jennifer Lansford is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available in our Licensing Agreement.

Lansford, J. (2024). Adolescent development. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. Retrieved from http://noba.to/btay62sn