Resources, Potentials and Academic Achievements of Students. Part 1. Differentiation of Resources and Potentials

Abstract

Introduction. To develop the measures for improvement of the training in higher education, it is necessary to establish external and internal prerequisites for academic achievements of students. The external prerequisites include structural and functional organisation, educational environment. The internal prerequisites consist of cognitive factors – intelligence, creativity, and non-cognitive factors – self-efficacy, self-control, motivation, expectations and goal setting. However, the internal prerequisites have not yet thoroughly studied yet; the currently available information about them is rather contradictory and fragmented. There is no consistency in the interpretations and criteria of personal learning resources and potentials, and the numerous models are inaccurate in most cases.The aim of the present research is to conceptually harmonise and systematise disjointed scientific data on the internal resources and potentials of students as prerequisites for their academic success in higher education.Methodology and research methods. The resources and potentials are differentiated by personality categories and cognitive processes based on analytical review of psychological research. The system-integrative approach was the key approach to study the individual. Initially, this approach involves the identification (differentiation) of the basic components of the system followed by the reverse process – their commonality (integration) into the system, in which its new qualities and capabilities can be revealed.Results and scientific novelty. The psychological theories and concepts of resources and personality potentials are arranged and reconsidered. The differences in foreign and Russian studies of this topic are highlighted. Their diverse components from the field of general, social and development psychology are mainly due to different traditions. Despite the considerable differences in scientific search and research approaches, the general idea is revealed: the resources are recognised as the space of current, and potentials – the space of possible. This raises the questions about the optimal expression and measurement of data determinants of students’ academic achievements, and whether there are intersections between resources and potentials.The existing models of resources and potentials are critically assessed. The independent importance of these phenomena and the demand for their separate analysis are shown: the clarifications made by the authors, in some cases, contribute to a better understanding of the phenomena under consideration. The authors of the present article propose to classify both resources and potentials into personal and cognitive categories in terms of their future integration in order to fill some gaps in psychological knowledge. The specific actions are outlined to study empirically the resources and potentials of students’ academic achievements with the aim of building a generalised model, converging on the contributions of all internal prerequisites to these achievements.Practical significance. The research materials are of practical significance for specialists in higher education. Moreover, the research outcomes can be included in the training courses in personality psychology and cognitive psychology for students of psychology departments of classical and pedagogical universities.