School performance depends on cognitive impact while academic performance
depends on how the qualitative and quantitative evaluation of students is
carried out, which is open to a wide range of very complex criteria.
Students? emotional intelligence is put to the test by the intense and
constant completion of tasks to achieve the required credits. However,
students do not manage to adapt to this system, which causes rejection and
procrastination in completing tasks, and is evident from their really bad
state of mind and stress intolerance. These factors can be so strong that
they prevent adequate development; school commitments and obligations are
neglected, affecting academic performance, which remains in the first order.
Consequently, we aim to identify the critical cognitive factors that prevent
the change of order and process them through fuzzy cognitive maps. To do so,
a survey of students and teachers from Spanish and Mexican universities was
carried out. Through confirmatory factor analysis, the number of items to be
analysed was reduced. The variance analysis detected significant differences
between students? attitude and what teachers thought, and an assignment
matrix was obtained. Finally, by obtaining Hamming distance, the critical
factors that prevent good academic performance could be found. The main
result obtained is that the critical factors that prevent change of order in
cognitive elements are mainly problem solving, stress tolerance, reality
testing, empathy, self-concept and happiness.