Review of Related Literature

Academic achievements is defined by Crow and Crow (1969) as the extent to which

a learner is profiting from instruction in a given area of learning or in other words, achievement

is reflected by the extent to which skill and knowledge has been imparted to the students. Many

studies have been conducted to determine the factors affecting the academic achievement of

Elementary Pupils. Reports have confirmed that students’ personality characteristics like socio-

psychological variables are good predictors of academic achievement (Abe, 1995; Umoinyang,

1998; and Odinko, 1999).

In addition, Academic achievement was once thought to be the most important outcome

of formal educational experiences and while there is little doubt as to the vital role such

achievements play in student life and later (Kell, Lubinski, & Benbow, 2013), researchers and

policymakers are ever increasingly turning to social and emotional factors, as well as the

relationships among them, as indicators of student well-being and psychological development

(Chernyshenko, Kankaras, & Drasgow, 2018; Frydenberg, Martin, & Collie, 2017; Moore, Mok,

Chan, & Lai, 2006). Indicative of this movement is the recent addition of social and emotional

measures to established Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

measures (e.g. PISA, OECD, 2019). These measures include, according to Chernyshenko et al.

(2018), emotional regulation (e.g. stress resistance, optimism), task performance (e.g.

motivation, persistence, self-control) and compound skills (e.g. metacognition, self-efficacy)

Academic achievement plays a role in the studies by Colmar, Liem, Connor, and Martin

(2019) and Martinez, Youssef-Morgan, Chambel, and Marques-Pinto (2019). For Colmar et al.

(2019), the capacity of elementary school students to respond to academic setbacks, academic

buoyancy, was not predictive of academic achievement. However, academic buoyancy effects

were demonstrated for both reading and mathematics achievement in Australian students when

mediated by self-concept. Psychological capital resources (e.g. efficacy, hope, optimism,

resilience) are foregrounded in Martinez et al.’s (2019) examination of Spanish/Portuguese

university students’ engagement and achievement. Their findings showed that students who

report being engaged in learning are more likely to be users of psychological capital who in turn

are more likely to achieve higher academically.

Lastly, Academic achievements (Elliot, 2005) underpin the studies by Cho and Kim

(2019) and Chen, Elliot, and Sheldon (2019). The former examined longitudinally in which the

findings regarding about academic achievements to the South Korean students and also

investigated self-determined motivation (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Among some complex findings,

Cho and Kim (2019) showed that early autonomous motives were related positively to mastery-

oriented goals in the following year, which in turn were related to increased autonomous

motives in the next year. The latter study explored psychological need support (competence,

autonomy, and relatedness) in concert with achievement goals in their Chinese university

sample showing, among other results, the importance of mastery-approach goals as mediators

in linking autonomy support and self-determined motivation.

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