Any learning process, regardless of where and in what conditions it takes place, ultimately has one main goal. The student must be transferred either practical skills or a certain amount of theoretical knowledge. Therefore, to understand how successful the process was, some measures are needed to assess its results and effectiveness. However, if it is possible to objectively evaluate the work done in practical skills, then assessing the transferred knowledge is a much more complicated process. In addition, knowledge can not always be shared successfully since there are often various obstacles to the educational process. Thus, the purpose of this essay is to define educational success, explore ways to measure it and analyze the barriers to achieving that success.
The term “educational achievement” is rather vague depending on the circumstances, making it difficult to derive a specific definition. Different outcomes can be considered an educational success in other contexts. In addition, studies show that this term and its synonyms are often misused, including the full range of required outcomes (York et al., 2015). However, educational achievement is only one part of the larger concept of academic success, which also includes acquired skills, satisfaction with the process, and continued success. Therefore, this very definition is understood as the level of achievements in the educational sphere according to a built plan, according to which they can be tracked and evaluated.
However, this also requires the availability of specific means of assessing educational achievements. The most common among them are two types: grades and GPA. For most situations, these methods are suitable without any significant problems; however, studies show that these two methods do not always correctly reflect the growth of cognitive abilities (York et al., 2015). Nevertheless, almost all people have encountered the first method since it is most common at school and university education stages. With the help of specific assessments, it is possible to assess the success of a particular task, and the better the scale is worked out, the more accurate the evaluation will be. For example, a university may use a grade from 0 to 100, categorized into different categories.
However, such a scale reflects success in only one task, while the GPA parameter, or Grade Point Average, can be used to get a more general picture. Due to averaging, this parameter does not reflect success in particular areas, concentrating on the overall picture of an individual’s academic performance. Averaging can produce a reasonably high GPA, even if the score is very low for several vital subjects. Because of this, the GPA is far from the most accurate assessment tool that allows getting only a general image of educational achievement.
Inaccurate assessment tools are not the only barrier to educational achievement. Depending on the conditions, environment, and aspects of a particular personality, these obstacles may vary. However, several things can occur in any environment. First of all, a lot depends on the quality of educational materials. If students are provided with old textbooks, which are extremely difficult to study, reaching the necessary milestones will be challenging (Turner, 2017). Another common problem is the lack of time spent on training for one reason or another. For example, for many people, getting an education comes with other time-consuming responsibilities at the same time. Finally, a lot in education depends on the teacher’s personality, which can make the education process either very easy or extremely difficult.
Thus, educational achievements should be understood as compliance with specific, clearly stated points of the academic plan, expressed in the form of assigned tasks. In this case, educational achievement is most often assessed either using specific grades or through the average score in the case of a more extensive assessment. However, in addition to the imprecision inherent in the assessment methods themselves, many other problems stand in the way of educational achievement. Among them, it is worth highlighting the poor quality of the information taught, the small amount of time devoted to teaching, or personal problems, both from the student and teaching side.
References
Turner, C. (2017). 10 educational obstacles throughout the world. The Borgen Project. Web.
York, T. T., Gibson, C., & Rankin, S. (2015). Defining and measuring academic success. Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation, 20(1), 5. Web.