Learning Outcomes
On completion of this unit, you should be able to Discuss issues relating to:
- Academic Failure,
- Academic Underachievement,
- Poor Academic Performance and its applicability in medical education
IMPORTANCE OF ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT ANALYSIS TO MEDICAL EDUCATION.
It will:
- Promote standard.
- Facilitate the need to give consideration to the issue of individual differences.
- Serve as feedback mechanism for the re-evaluation of
medical curriculum.
- Serve as a measure to promote efficiency in medical practices.
KEY CONCEPTS IN ACADEMIC ACHIVEMENT ANALYSIS
• Academic failure
- Poor academic performance
- Causative factor in poor academic achievement and scholastic malfunctioning
- Basic cognitive skills.
PRINCIPLE CONCEPTS
ACADEMIC FAILURE
• Performance that falls below a specified standard
or criterion of excellence.
- The University of Medical Sciences, pass mark in
all the faculties is 40%.
- The pass mark is an arbitrarily set standard.
PRINCIPLE CONCEPTS
POOR ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE
- Performance that falls below a desired standard.
- More subjective than Academic Failure because a desired standard could be interpreted in various ways.
- Any performance that falls below this adequate, appropriate, wished or wanted standard.
- Can span from zero to 100; and therefore a pass mark might be poor performance depending on the expectation or standard desired.
Problems in the Nigerian context
- Wastage in human and financial resources.
- Public examination performance in Nigeria has been
consistently poor in the past 20 years.
- At the primary school level, many pupils go through without acquiring the basic academic survival skills.
- Most primary school pupils at the completion of their
education can neither read nor write.
