¿Están relacionadas las funciones ejecutivas y el rendimiento académico en Educación Primaria? Evaluación del modelo educativo Rubik

Enrique Navarro-Asencio; Henar Rodriguez-Navarro; Carmen Pellicer Iborra; María Castro Morera

doi:10.5944/educxx1.44486

Authors

Enrique Navarro-Asencio Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3052-146X
Henar Rodriguez-Navarro Universidad de Valladolid, Spain https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6993-8441
Carmen Pellicer Iborra Fundación Trilema, Spain https://orcid.org/0009-0004-4156-8062
María Castro Morera Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2597-3621

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5944/educxx1.44486

Keywords:

Executive Function, Learning Processes, Academic Achievement, Elementary Education, Program Evaluation

Abstract

The literature warns of a relationship between executive functions and academic performance. This study evaluates the impact of the Rubik educational model, focused on the teaching and development of executive functions, on academic performance in Primary Education. A sample of 232 students in 2nd, 4th, 5th and 6th grades of Primary Education from three subsidized schools of the Trilema network was used. A pretest-post test design was used to measure executive functions using the BRIEF-2 instrument and academic performance using school grades in mathematics, science and language. This work has a triple objective. The study of the change in executive functions after school intervention and the study of this evolution by performance levels is carried out using non-parametric analyses of mean differences. The analysis of the causal relationship between executive functions and academic performance is carried out using structural equation modeling. The results show that there is a significant improvement in executive functions after the intervention in the upper levels of primary school, being especially important in initiative, working memory and planning. It is also observed that students with lower initial performance were the most benefited by the intervention, showing significant changes in executive functions. The most conclusive result points to the strong and significant causal relationship between executive functions and school performance, explaining 35% of the variance in the results. Executive functions are crucial for learning, as shown by the results of this work, and educational programs such as Rubik are effective because they combine the teaching of these functions with the development of school learning.

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