Psychosocial Determinants of Learners’ Poor Performance in South African Primary Schools: A Systematic Review Protocol

Abstract Introduction: Psychosocial determinants play a significant role in shaping an individual's cognitive and emotional development, which in turn can impact their performance in various domains, including education. Understanding these determinants is essential for identifying barriers and implementing interventions to support positive outcomes in learners. This review will be based on the apiece of the mental health of learners in schools. We envisage that the topic will cover an array of outcomes touching on psychological and socioeconomic determinates, learner-student relations, and the psychological well-being of learners. Methods and analysis: Articles for this review shall be searched through PubMed, PsychArticle, PsychINFO, EBSCOHost, Sabinet African Journal and African Journals Online). Moreover, we will conduct a forward search by using the option "cited by" and/or "related articles" on Google Scholar to find other articles which might meet the inclusion criteria to be part of the review. Boolean search will consist of keywords, MeSH concepts, truncations and wildcats to retrieve relevant articles from the above-mentioned databases. The selection of articles will be based on exclusion and inclusion criteria. The criteria shall consider the following variables a) demographic characteristics of the study participants (age and grade); b) date of publication; c) setting (South Africa); d) study design; e) language of publication. After conducting the search databases, articles will be exported to Endnote 21 for screening by the team. The identified relevant studies for this review will be divided among reviewers for data extraction. Methods of selected articles will be assessed using Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT) criteria.