Interlinking Delay and Discipline: A Systematic Study of Academic Procrastination, Self-Regulated Learning, and Their Predictive Role in Academic Success of School Students

Abstract

The study seeks to analyze the interrelationship among academic procrastination, self-regulated learning, and intelligence, and their combined contribution to academic achievement. Academic procrastination, as a construct, reflects behavioural tendencies of delay and avoidance in task completion, often linked with decreased motivation and poor time management. In contrast, self-regulated learning is conceptualised as a constructive process wherein learners plan, monitor, and regulate their cognitive and metacognitive strategies to attain academic goals. Intelligence, understood as a measure of general cognitive capacity, has long been regarded as a predictor of achievement, yet its role requires re-examination when studied alongside motivational and behavioural factors such as procrastination and self-regulation. The study positions itself within a theoretical framework that integrates cognitive, behavioural, and motivational dimensions of learning. It assumes that academic procrastination negatively influences achievement, while self-regulated learning exerts a positive effect, and intelligence functions both as an independent predictor and as a potential mediator in this relationship. The theoretical model thus situates academic success at the intersection of intellectual ability, motivational orientation, and behavioural discipline, emphasizing the need to study these constructs together rather than in isolation. Through this approach, the study contributes to the theoretical discourse by highlighting the dialectical relationship between delay and discipline, suggesting that neither intelligence nor motivation alone can sufficiently account for variations in achievement. Instead, it proposes that the balance between self-regulation and procrastination, moderated by cognitive resources, provides a more comprehensive explanation of academic success. The work, therefore, extends the understanding of student learning behaviours by offering a framework where academic achievement is theorized as an outcome of interacting cognitive, motivational, and behavioural systems.