Academic Help-Seeking: A Constructivist Approach in Learning and Achievement

Academic achievement has become the prime concern of teachers, parents as well as of students in the 21st century. Academic achievement decides future success, social acceptance, emotional stability and self-esteem. Therefore, the prime concern of present day teaching-learning process is the eradication of low achievement. An important factor which creates performance gap between high and low achievers is the use constructivist learning strategies. High achievers were often found as more self-regulated learners and better users of cognitive constructivist strategies. Academic help-seeking is one such under focused constructivist strategy which plays an important part in students' learning but has been ignored by researchers for a long time. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to enlighten the readers about the role of academic help-seeking as a constructivist strategy in academic achievement and how high and low achievers differ in academic help-seeking. Based on the findings from different literatures, the present paper also established the fact that high achievers are better help-seekers than low achievers. Thus the current paper predicted that low achievers could be made better achievers by bringing changes in their help-seeking strategies. The role of teachers and parents in improving academic help-seeking behavior has also been discussed.