School achievement and failure in Portuguese and Spanish speaking countries

Abstract

School failure is an important social problem in the present world (Organization for Economic Co-operation Development, 2010). This seems to be especially true for Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries in Europe (Eurydice, 2011) and Latin America (Román, 2013). Consequently, school achievement and failure is an increasingly important topic of discussion and research. Psychology can make an important contribution to understanding these issues, emphasizing the individual perspective, i.e., defining academic and pre-academic skills for a good achievement and developing sound evaluation and intervention techniques for children with school failure problems. The following papers revise the latest developments in the field. The research covered tried to answer the most urgent questions on the topic: (1) Which variables are responsible for school achievement and failure? (2) Which intervention techniques can be used to help children with school failure problems? All papers focused on children attending primary or secondary school, except one that dealt with prevention strategies for children at risk before schooling. Most sought correlations between determining variables and some measures of school achievement. Two studies applied intervention strategies designed to improve the academic performance of children with problems at school and systematically evaluated their results.