The Factors of Academic Success for Students

As people grow older, their roles are growing also. Childhood will be ended and they have to realize it. People change their life to be better than before. The biggest transformation happens when they become teenagers. During this period, teenagers must focus on their study as high school student. When they become high school student, they basically have bigger responsibilities, more complicated projects and difficult homework, interact with other students, and learn how to treat their teachers properly. Katie (2012) indicates that high intelligence can help make coursework, from kindergarten to college, it is not the only factor that goes into determining success of high school students. Actually, the role can build the character of students, whether they abided by the rules or they want to break the rules. It gives the big impact for them to change their future. They need to design their future by doing some activities that give positive sides of them as possible as they can. Then, they can create the success by their own way. But, most of the high school student did not know what kind of things that can help them to be a successful person. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate what students should do to get success in the future on their way. This essay, anyhow, principally concerns about the factors which are related to academic success in high school students. 

‘The Factors of Academic Success in High School Students’ usually defined in reference to 11 things, such as: individual attention, motivation, guidance, challenging goals and effective feedback, collegiality and professionalism, learning method, school facilities, infrastructure, curriculum, study skills, and learning resources.

One thing that students want to get from their teacher is about individual attention. Phil (2007) indicates that the trick to teaching gifted students is to address the student’s short comings on an individual basis, because they can easily breeze through most schools without having the need to improve themselves. It automatically helps them to develop their ability. All students need the protection. From the protection that students got, they can learn and lead themselves as possible as they can. By giving the individual attention, teacher will understand how their students grow up. Basically, they can evaluate the ability of their students based on the development of their students.

The second factor is about motivation. When students feel more motivated to learn, they perform better academically, improve classroom behavior, and gain a higher sense of self-esteem (Ferlazzo, 2015). Every student has the characteristic itself. Sometimes, most of them can not solve their problem by their own self. Therefore, teacher should be considerate for their students. By giving the motivation, students will feel confident to do something as they want. This situation helps student to create their mindset for doing something individually which is important for their future after finishing the assignment from school.

The third factor is about guidance. Marin (2011) indicates that guidance is needed to help the students for optimum achievement and adequate adjustment in the varied life situations. When students complain about what they have done, feel depressed, or get some problems from their school, the important role of teacher is give some advices for make their students focus on what they should do. Teacher does not need to blame the students by treat them roughly. By giving the guidance, students become more comfortable to share each other about what they feel honestly.

The forth factor is about challenging goals and effective feedback. Marzano (2010) claimed that high expectations and pressure to achieve refer to establishing challenging goals for students. The goal that easy to achieve does not affect students to study hard. This is one of the reasons why students can reach their dream without doing anything. Otherwise, the goal that difficult to achieve, while the mental capacity that they have are not strong enough, make students obviously hopeless. As a result, students do not use all of the ability to achieve their goals. Therefore, the challenging goals will make the students try hard to get it. They want to work hard for achieve their goal that has been established. A big effort that students built will give an influence for the development of their ability to achieve those goals. If students believe that the effort which they have done is appropriate, then they will be more excited to achieve their goals. Of course they can get some advantages from this. It means that students need an effective feedback from what they have done to achieve their goals. Feedback is about setting goals, even with the youngest students and working toward meeting these goals. Therefore, effective feedback should be one of the greatest goals when it comes to teaching or school leadership (DeWitt, 2013). Without an effective feedback, students will be feeling down for achieve their goals because they realize that they do something which has no result at the end.

The fifth factor is about collegiality and professionalism. Collegiality factor and professionalism factor deal with the manner in which staff members in the school interact and the extent to which they approach their work as professionals (Marzano, 2010). The collegial relationship between teacher and the others have a big role to build a great community which consists of the different personalities. Alternately, it supports academic success and learning methods in the school, especially to create a school climate. The relationship between teacher and the others in the school must not ignore their priority as a teacher. Therefore, collegiality should be balanced with professionalism. Teacher surely can manage the role when they need to communicate their students during the lesson and communicate with other teachers.

The sixth factor is about learning method. Baeyer (2005) indicates that successful students get to know something well enough that they can put it into words, transferring ideas into words provides the most direct path for moving knowledge from short-term to long-term memory, then doing talk-learning which produces a whole host of memory traces that result in more learning. The function of learning method in education is to transfer the knowledge from teacher to student, so that students can easier to make some plans for their career in the future. It makes the students feel happy and easy to understand the knowledge that taught by their teacher. Learning method is something people used to sharing about the critical thinking, feelings, attention, and dreams that they want to realize and it is connected by some facilities in the school.

The seventh factor is about school facilities. Buildings that are not properly maintained have the potential to inhibit student success due to one or more deficiencies in the facility. (Blagojevich, 2006).  Beside to helps the learning method in school, the facilities that given by the government which the function is doing the observation from the materials that students want to learn about. Successful teaching and learning to takes place in school buildings that are clean, quiet, safe, comfortable, and healthy. Students, teachers, staff, and administrators all are affected by the physical environment. The theory that students get in the school can officially practice in real life. It creates the balance between theory and practice in the learning method. If teacher only teach the theory to students without doing the practice, then it would be an assessment for students to preserve the materials they like. In a learning process, the quality of education is supported by the facilities in the school. It gives the influence of students’ ability in the class. It means that the role of facilities in the school is important to build the quality of students. As for the relationship between the school facilities and the education process can applied efficiently, it shows that school facilities should be managed effectively to learning process in the school.

The eighth factor is about infrastructure. Infrastructure is the first impression for children when they go to school. The lack of high quality infrastructure can shape student outcomes (Ulrich, 2013). If they felt happy like there is no burden, it means that children who enter the school in the first time can classified as a great place (student enjoys doing in one’s spare time). By building the school infrastructure adequately, it will give the positive impacts to increase the school quality. The class will feel comfortable to stay so the students will be more diligent to study there. Some facilities that provided at the school also help the lesson is easy to understand. These advantages can support the students for study hard.

The ninth factor is about curriculum. Curriculum is one of the important roles which can achieve the education goals.  Such an approach to curriculum presents at least two sets of problems in minority education, one in regard to content, and another in regard to process (Barnhardt, 1981). There are 3 important roles of curriculum that student needs which consist of conservative role, evaluative role, and creative role. Student need to have a good balance for doing those roles to achieve their goals optimally. Thus, to a large extent in a subject-oriented curriculum, the learning process becomes subordinate to, or is determined by the nature of the content.

The tenth factor is about study skill. Even students with above average intelligence are often surprised at the level of work and commitment required by undergraduate and graduate programs, and may lack the study skills necessary to excel (Garcia, 2011). To create a success in real life, student also must get a good grade in their school. It aims that students have their own concept to help them face their future easily. As students, their obligation is study hard. Therefore, they need to improve the study skill to help them feel enthusiasm for get the new knowledge. By an effective study skill, it surely helps them for do learning process easily and got good result. It affected self-confident, increase the capability, be valued, try something new, never give up, and the other positive sides.

The last is about learning resource. Morrison (2014) indicates that students need a wide range of skills to learn successfully in online settings; they need to be tech savvy, know how to collaborate with peers, conduct online research, navigate proficiently within the learning management platform, manage their time effectively and engage in the learning process by interacting with content, peers and completing course work via the learning platform. It was incomplete if students only have one source to get new knowledge. It surely rather obstruct them to move to another material rapidly if they just depend on one book or teacher’s explanation. It is very important for r parents to give other learning resources for their children. In modern era, get new knowledge not only by reading a book. Parents who get a high income have required for using internet media as an effective way of learning resources.

There are several factors which are related to academic success in high school students. By giving an individual attention, a motivation, a guidance, a challenging goals and an effective feedback, the collegiality and the professionalism, the learning method, the school facilities, an infrastructure, the curriculum, the study skills, and the learning resources for students, it will increase their spirit for create the success by their own way. In conclusion, high school students should make use of those factors to create their academic success.