Introducing the Concept of 'Student Profiling': A Cross-Cultural Perspective for Understanding

Abstract

Fostering students’ academic well-being and learning experiences is an integral part of successful schooling. Enriched academic well-being experiences, for example, has been noted to influence academic achievement and achievement-related outcomes. One important aspect involves the development of initiatives and programs that could enable the achievement of optimal best practice, academically and non-academically. The use of verbal discourse to enhance self-beliefs, for example, may serve to instill a heightened state of motivation and confidence, resulting in the enrichment of well-beings. We recently developed a new theoretical concept, known as the Framework of Achievement Bests that could operate to promote and cultivate positive academic and non-academic well-being experiences. This framework emphasizes the psychological process of optimization, and a person’s state of optimal functioning in different subject domains.Our framework entails two important levels of best practice: realistic achievement best (i.e., an individual’s actual competence to perform a task as a result of his/her learning experience) and optimal achievement best (i.e., an individual’s striving to seek mastery in competence to perform a task, reflecting his/her fullest capacity, as a result of his/her learning experience). Arising from this distinction in terms of best practice is a new theoretical concept that we introduce here, in this chapter, namely, the importance of ‘profiling’ that a person may report and manifest: ‘High Realistic, High Optimal,’ ‘High Realistic, Low Optimal,’ ‘Low Realistic, Low Optimal,’ and/or ‘Low Realistic, High Optimal.’ In mathematics learning, say, a secondary school student may indicate a high state of realistic best, and a low state of optimal best (i.e., ‘High Realistic, Low Optimal’). This profiling has consequences and implications for consideration, which we theorize could serve as an educational tool for the purpose of encouraging and fostering an enriched state of well-being experience. This chapter, in line with the theme of this edited book, “Progress in Education,” focuses on the Framework of Achievement Bests from a Taiwanese cultural perspective. In particular, as a collaborative research investigation from two institutions, we delved into the potential impact of ‘profiling’ on students’ learning experiences and well-beings at school. We contend that achieving a particular type of profiling of best practice in learning (e.g., ‘High anRealistic, High Optimal’), for example, may assist in the enhancement of positive academic well-being experiences. This theorization has important educational and psychological implications for consideration, especially in relation to the advancement and development of initiatives and/or programs that could cultivate adoption of a particular type of profile. In a similar vein, detrimental profiles (e.g., ‘Low Realistic, Low Optimal’) may have negative consequences for students, such as engagement in maladaptive practices and feelings of helplessness.