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This paper aims to propose and examine the relationship between students’ perception of service quality and dimensions and their academic achievement.

Based on the resource-based view, a conceptual relationship between service quality and dimensions and academic achievement is proposed and tested with a sample of 380 STEM university students who attended secondary schools in a region of Spain.

Service quality and four of its dimensions (i.e. empathy, reliability, responsiveness and assurance/confidence) could contribute to students’ academic achievement. The expected effect of tangible elements on academic achievement was not supported by the data. Results were controlled for student’s personal factors that have proven important in explaining academic achievement in previous studies (i.e. need for cognition, need for emotion and self-efficacy).

Previous research has extensively studied factors affecting students’ academic achievement. However, the direct relationship between service quality and student’s academic achievement has been rarely proposed and examined. Service quality has been mostly viewed as a precursor of student satisfaction and loyalty. This research views service quality as a school higher-order capability that supplements students’ capabilities.

This research aims to add to the literature on Academic Optimism, a composite measure composed of teacher perceptions of trust in students, academic press, and collective efficacy by exploring a similar set of constructs from the student perceptive. The relationships between student trust in teachers, student perceptions of academic press, and student identification with school were examined as well as how they were individually and collectively related to student achievement in the schools in an urban school district.

This study assessed the perceptions of students in 49 elementary, middle, and high schools in one urban district. The measures used included the Student Trust in Teachers Survey (Adams and Forsyth), the Identification with School Questionnaire (Voelkl), and an adaptation of Academic Press (Hoy, Hannum and Tschannen‐Moran). Confirmatory factor analysis was employed to explore whether these three observed variables would form a latent variable called Student Academic Optimism. Finally, the relationship of Academic Optimism to student achievement, controlling for SES, was examined using SEM.

Strong and significant relationships were found between all three of the observed variables. A CFA analysis confirmed that they formed a latent variable the authors called Student Academic Optimism. Student Academic Optimism had a significant direct effect on student achievement (b=0.73, p<0.01) while SES (percent of students eligible for the free and reduced lunch program) had a significant negative effect on student achievement (b=−0.37, p<0.01). Together student academic optimism and SES explained 67 percent of the variance in student achievement with student academic optimism making the largest contribution to the explanation.

The findings that Student Academic Optimism was unrelated to SES and that Student Academic Optimism has a significant effect on achievement over and above the effects of SES and student demographic characteristics leads the authors to consider the possibility that SES may not be as influential as once thought when other conditions of the school environment are taken into consideration.

This study makes a unique contribution to the literature by focusing on the perspectives of students and by linking the measures of three important dynamics within schools to form a new construct: Student Academic Optimism.

Prior research has highlighted gender differences in academic motivational attributes, and how these predict academic achievement for each gender; however, a vast amount of inconsistency exists amongst such literature. The purpose of this paper is to examine the predictive value of academic motivation (achievement goal, leaning goal, performance goal (PG), self-efficacy (SE), and active learning strategies (ALS)) and study time in explaining academic achievement amongst male and female students.

Cross-sectional survey design was applied. Participants were sampled opportunistically, and consisted of final year undergraduate students, including both males (n=126) and females (n=189) attending various courses at a UK university.

A multiple regression analysis carried out for each gender revealed that study time, ALS, PG, and SE were significant predictors of achievement for males, whereas SE was the only significant predictor of achievement for females.

These findings offer practical implications in terms of methods employed by educators to enhance academic achievement. Such implications highlight the importance of the development of SE in both genders and propose methods in which universities can enhance motivation in male and female students. Recommendations for future research are also made.

The present research was based on an online questionnaire. A total of 256 undergraduate psychology students aged 18–44 (M = 23.61; SD = 0.57) from the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina took part in the study (137 women; 53.3%). A sociodemographic and academic survey and the locally adapted versions of the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI), the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) and the Tuckman Procrastination Scale were used in this study. Participants were contacted by an email advertisement in which the main purpose of the study was explained, and the instruments remained open from September to November of 2021. Descriptive analyses – means, standard deviations and frequencies – were calculated using IBM SPSS v.25, and mediation and moderation analyses were conducted on PROCESS macro.

Academic achievement has always been a concern in the high undergraduate's community. Numerous studies have addressed psychological aspects of students' academic life; however, a past-positive (PP) time perspective, a warm and sentimental view of past events that took place in someone's life, has not been profoundly contemplated. The fact that students might organize their activities, employ different strategies to fulfill their tasks and motivate themselves to pursue their academic goals based primarily on their past experiences calls the attention on conducting research on this time perspective dimension and its relationship with procrastination and academic motivation. It was hypothesized that the PP time perspective would positively predict academic achievement via the mediation of academic motivation in a way that the potentiate effect of PP time perspective on academic achievement would be increased in highly motivated students, but this effect would be reduced in less motivated students. Also, it was hypothesized that the relationship between motivation and academic achievement would be negatively moderated by procrastination such that academic achievement would increase with academic motivation; however, that increase would be attenuated by procrastination.

Academic achievement was positively associated with PP time perspective (r = 0.39; p < 0.01) and academic motivation (0.36; p < 0.01) and negatively associated with procrastination (r = −0.15; p < 0.05). Results showed that academic motivation mediated the relationship between PP time perspective and academic achievement (ß = 1.37; R² = 0.21; p < 0.001). Additionally, procrastination moderated the relationship between academic motivation and academic achievement but only at the low (ß = 0.76; p < 0.001) and medium (ß = 0.44; p < 0.001) levels of procrastination, while at high levels of procrastination, that relationship was not statistically significant (ß = 0.11; p > 0.05).

This is the first study that examined the mediated role of academic motivation in the relationship between PP time perspective and academic achievement and that included the moderating role of procrastination.

The purpose of this study is to examine the associations between attitudes to academic achievement and post university success using perceptions of attractiveness, gender, ethnic identity, personality, and social acceptance as antecedents.

An online questionnaire was completed by male (N=116) and female (N=126) university students from various cultural backgrounds. To evaluate the proposed relationships, multiple regression analysis was used.

The findings suggest that attractiveness is related to attitudes to academic achievement and success through its association with social appeal and acceptance. Ethnic identity is also related to both academic achievement and post university success. Personality is not positively related to academic achievement. Finally, social acceptance is positively related to academic achievement for males and to success for females.

Whilst the survey targeted students from various cultural backgrounds studying in Australia, it did not look at university students from other countries. A cross‐cultural perspective could reveal further differences in attitudes.

This study links attractiveness and academic achievement theories. The findings have implications for tertiary institutions and suggest academics and policy‐makers to vigorously promote core personality and values such as intelligence, communication skills, and sincerity, rather than allow superficial values such as attractiveness to be placed at the centre stage of students' endeavour.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships among academic optimism, community engagement, and student achievement in urban elementary schools across one district.

Data were collected from all 35 urban elementary schools across one district in Virginia, USA. Correlation, multiple regression, and factor analyses were used to test the hypotheses.

In schools where the faculty are optimistic that their students can succeed despite the obstacle of low socioeconomic status (SES) and where the community is engaged, students are more likely to achieve at higher levels. Findings of this study also supported that community engagement, collective efficacy, trust in clients, and academic press do act as predictors to collectively influence student achievement.

The Goddard measure for collective efficacy was replaced with one developed for more challenging settings such as urban schools.

Academic optimism and community engagement were found to work in ways that improve student achievement. Understanding the social contexts in classrooms and schools allows education leaders to work with faculty in examining current practice, in an effort to improve the educational outcomes for all students, even those who must overcome the obstacles to learning posed by their low SES.

With only one previous study of this construct in an urban elementary setting, the current study sought to test those findings in an effort to continue pushing this research agenda into urban settings.

The purpose of this research is twofold: to test a theory of academic optimism in Taiwan elementary schools and to expand the theory by adding new variables, collective responsibility and enabling school structure, to the model.

Structural equation modeling was used to test, refine, and expand an organizational path model of student achievement first developed in the USA.

The proposed organizational model was supported in Taiwan and was consistent with the initial studies done in the USA. Further, two concepts were added to the model, enabling structure and collective responsibility, both of which had significant indirect effects on student achievement through academic optimism. Moreover, the theoretical foundations (efficacy, trust, and academic emphasis) of the latent construct of academic optimism were confirmed again in this sample of schools in Taiwan.

The findings support an organizational model of student achievement, which has application in both the USA and Taiwan. The original model was supported, refined, and extended. Academic optimism is at the center of the model and explains student achievement for all students. Collective responsibility and enabling school structure both predict academic optimism directly and student achievement indirectly.

The purpose of this paper is to trace a 40‐year research journey to identify organizational properties that foster the achievement of all students, regardless of socio‐economic status (SES).

The author describes a search for school properties that have an impact on the cognitive and social‐emotional development of faculty and students, with special emphasis on academic achievement.

Three characteristics of schools were identified that make a positive difference for student achievement controlling for the SES: collective efficacy, collective trust in parents and students, and academic emphasis of the school. Further these three measures are elements of a latent construct, academic emphasis of school, which is a powerful predictor of student achievement regardless of SES.

The paper identifies school variables that are often as important, or more important, than SES in explaining academic achievement, and a new model is created to explain how academic optimism influences student achievement.

The aim of this study was two‐fold: to demonstrate a general construct of schools called academic optimism and to show it was related to student achievement in urban elementary schools, even controlling for socioeconomic factors, and school size.

Data were collected from 99 urban elementary schools in Texas and multiple regression and factor analyses were used to test a series of hypotheses guiding the inquiry.

The major hypotheses of the study were supported; academic optimism was a second‐order construct comprised of collective efficacy, faculty trust, and academic optimism. Moreover, academic optimism is a school characteristic that predicts student achievement even controlling for socioeconomic status.

The results support Bandura's social cognitive theory, Coleman's social capital theory, Hoy and Tarter's work on organizational climate, and demonstrate the existence of a cultural property of schools called academic optimism. Further, the findings have practical implications for developing strategies to improve the academic performance of urban schools.

The findings demonstrate the existence of a new collective construct, academic optimism, which has the potential to help improve the effectiveness of schools.

This study aims to better understand how students’ academic strains and multilevel strengths relate to their math achievement, with a particular emphasis on underrepresented students of color and girls given the need to broaden science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) participation for these groups.

National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 data was used for a historical examination of the various student academic strains and multilevel strengths that relate to math achievement in high school. T-tests and chi-square tests were conducted to examine differences in strains and strengths across policy-relevant student subgroups. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression was used to examine how students’ strains and strengths related to their math achievement and the relative importance of each of these factors.

The findings suggest that both the academic strains and multilevel strengths that students’ experience in middle school are related to their high school math achievement and the prevalence of these factors varies across different policy-relevant student subgroups. Furthermore, the relative importance of these factors on achievement differs.

Studies which focus on either students’ academic challenges or their adaptive strengths fall short of a more nuanced discussion about how both factors relate to math outcomes. This study addresses this limitation and emphasizes that stakeholders who are interested in STEM diversity should consider holistic strategies for alleviating gender and racial/ethnic discrepancies in secondary math achievement.