Systematic review of the Spanish production about academic performance between 1980 and 2011

Abstract

Low Academic performance is a research problem of great social impact. However, scientific findings are not having an impact in terms of improvements or on educational policies. In this paper, our goals were to identify, organize, analyze and draw conclusions regarding Spanish academic performance in order to visualize the problems and identify areas for future research. This was carried out as a six-step procedure, in which methodological procedures using synthesis and bibliometric research were combined. Publications were identified in four Spanish databases; the data was then analyzed and coded under nine indicators: title, year, type of paper, publisher, author, number of authors, institution, region and topic. The results show steadily increasing production (1595 references), but disperse in terms of the huge number of published authors, most with a single paper, and of the places where they were published. The topics most widely addressed were explanatory models, diagnosis and treatment, followed by the factors and variables that determined the high or low academic achievement and, thirdly, studies of legislation and other performance-related psychological and educational variables. This study is a synthesis of production about academic performance in Spain and is a first step towards further synthesis research, to identify best practices for the exercise of “evidence-based practices”, and other research problems.