Factors Influencing Student Achievement

Please help with the following problem.

Help detail the various cultural, ethnic, and socioeconomic factors that influence a student’s achievement. In addition, discuss various bad influence that can help improve student’s chances of achieving.
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Let’s start with the easiest factor to approach: socioeconomic.

In general, the correlation is that students of lower socioeconomic status tend to achieve less than their higher status counterparts. Although certainly not always true, being of lower socioeconomic status can mean that other needs other than the acquisition of knowledge comes first. This is where we may be able to apply Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which states that an individual has basic needs which need to be satisfied in order to develop other higher needs. For example, it is, unfortunately, common to see students who first have to struggle to find the security of having enough food on a weekly basis, due to a lack of financial means to acquire food. This, if unsatisfied, hinders the natural development of the need for knowledge, which can hinder achievement. If there is a little inherent need for knowledge, it is hard to motivate students to achieve beyond minimum requirements.

Lower socioeconomic status also comes with insecurity about various aspects, one of which we’ve already discussed. Often, these individuals also seek security in the form of peer groups – as all of us normally do – however, these peer groups are often similarly insecure in their basic resources. This contributes to the group’s general approach towards crime as a means to escape insecurity. An individual in this group might recognize that crime is wrong, but join the …