Academic Achievement of Adolescent Students in Relation to Their Self-Concept
Authors-Sudesh, Dr. Vinod Kumar
Keyword-Academic Achievement, Self-Concept, Adolescents, Secondary School, Locale, Gender.
Academic achievement remains one of the central goals of the educational process, and a grow-ing body of research suggests that how a student thinks and feels about themselves — their self-concept — is closely bound up with how well they perform in school. The present paper reports a study undertaken to examine the academic achievement and self-concept of adolescent students studying in secondary schools of Yamuna Nagar district, Haryana, and to determine whether these two variables differ significantly by gender and by locale (rural/urban), and whether they are related to one another. A sample of one hundred and twenty secondary school students was drawn through stratified random sampling from four schools, equally balanced across gender and locale. Self-concept was measured using the standardised Self-Concept Questionnaire de-veloped by P. K. Saraswat, while academic achievement was recorded as students' percentage of marks in the Class 10 board examination. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics, the independent samples t-test, and Pearson's coefficient of correlation. Results showed a highly significant locale-wise difference in academic achievement favouring urban students, no signifi-cant gender difference in either academic achievement or self-concept, and a low but positive correlation between academic achievement and self-concept. The paper discusses these findings against existing literature and offers implications for schools and educators.
Doi-[https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21902621]