Evaluating a Program for Enhancing the Study Skills
and Academic Performance of Urban High School Students*
Bruce W. Tuckman
The Ohio State University
An educational psychology-based
“study skills” program: Strategies-for-Achievement, originally developed to teach learning and motivation
strategies to college students, was modified for use by high school students.
It involved teaching students four achievement strategies: take reasonable
risk, take responsibility, search the environment, use feedback. Each was
divided into two sub-strategies, and used to teach students to overcome
procrastination, build self-confidence and responsibility, manage their lives,
learn from lecture and text, and prepare for exams. The training was provided
as a course taught using a “blended” technology-based instructional model
called Active Discovery And Participation thru Technology (ADAPT). Students who
took the training course earned significantly higher grade point averages in
comparison to a matched group, during the term they took the course.
Purpose of Study
One
of the greatest challenges facing high schools nationally is the enrollment,
retention and graduation of at-risk urban students. Despite national, state, and local efforts to remedy the
situation through curriculum and instruction reform measures, the educational
achievement gap among students of differing income level and ethnicity still
exists. This results in significant negative costs to individuals, education
institutions, and society at large.
Many
students in urban settings are not able to take full advantage of educational
opportunities, as
reflected in enrollment, retention, and graduation data, and their overwhelming
need for remediation. On a national basis the percentage of low income
high school graduates who immediately continue on to college or other
comparable training is only 47%, compared to 82% for their high income
counterparts (Phillippe, 2000). This is
despite a major movement on the secondary level to include specialized programs
that prepare urban students for college.
On a local basis,
from a cohort group of approximately 20,000 ninth-graders in the Columbus, Ohio
Public Schools (the 15th largest urban school district in the
country), only about 5,000 (25%) will be prepared to enroll in college, and
less than half will graduate. A way
must be found to increase the numbers of low-income, minority, and
non-traditional urban students who graduate from high school and are eligible
for enrollment in postsecondary education.
Getting
into college and then dropping out is also a problem at postsecondary education
institutions, even among students who enter with high school records that would
appear to predict college success. On a
national basis the university drop-out rate is about 25% and
community college drop-out rate 50%, with the majority in both places occurring
in the first year. Among urban minority
students who enroll in college, 55% choose community colleges, often because of
their easy accessibility, low cost, broad based admission policies, and
diversity of program offerings, yet only 50% remain in school (American
Association of Community Colleges, 2002). The magnitude of the retention problem in community
colleges is exacerbated by their current growth rate.
A lack of preparedness for college among graduating
high school seniors is further attested to by the need for remediation that
they bring with them upon college entry. McCabe (2000) reports that more than
one million students nationwide (42% of first-time college goers) enroll in
remedial courses annually. About two-thirds of this total is at public
community colleges, and one-third from a minority group, yet even remediation
does not significantly reduce the retention problem.
Innovative reforms must be implemented that remove barriers to academic success, most notably students’ lack of motivation and relevant learning skills. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to adapt and test a multifaceted program for providing urban high school students training in learning and motivation strategies that are designed to increase their achievement levels as evidenced by academic performance and their readiness for postsecondary education. The unique intervention presented in this research is one that combines psychology, curriculum, and the cost-effectiveness and ubiquity of technology to provide urban high school students with specific instruction that, by virtue of its content and method of delivery, enhances desire and ability to succeed academically and make educational progress. Explicit instruction in what has been historically referred to as “study skills,” but is more accurately represented as learning and motivation strategies, represents a potentially promising approach for increasing academic success as manifested by subsequent high school graduation and college enrollment.
Theoretical
Framework
The
Strategies-for-Achievement program evolved from the achievement motivation
model for entrepreneurship originally espoused by David McClelland (1979), but
has been translated into strategies for success in education (Tuckman, 2002,
2003; Tuckman, Abry, & Smith, 2002) by including more current
social-cognitive and schema theories based upon considerable research and
testing. The strategies and
sub-strategies are summarized in Table 1.
Table 1. Strategies and
Sub-strategies in the Approach
|
Take reasonable risk |
(a)
Set
goals (b)
Break
tasks down into “bite sized pieces. |
|
Take responsibility for
your outcomes |
(a)
Focus
your thoughts on “self” and
effort” as causal explanations (b)
Plan |
|
Search the environment
for information |
(a)
Ask
questions (b)
Use
visualization |
|
Use feedback |
(a)
Self
monitor (b)
Self
instruct |
Supporting
this approach is a conceptual framework for self-regulation directly addressing
the issue of increasing student achievement in school that includes both a
motivational and cognitive component, and two sources of influence: (a)
knowledge and beliefs, and (b) strategies (Garcia and Pintrich, 1994). Within
this framework, the above strategies and substrategies are used as the basis
for a program aimed at teaching students to meet the affective goals of
overcoming procrastination, building self-confidence, becoming more
responsible, and managing their lives, and the cognitive goals of learning from
lecture and text, preparing for tests, and writing papers.
—
The Motivational Component: For
the motivational component, particular emphasis in the new
Strategies-For-Achievement approach is placed on the basic premise of social
cognitive theory that there exists a mutually interactive relationship between
thoughts, behaviors, and environmental consequences, necessitating a change in
thoughts as a prerequisite to changing behavior.
For example, in the module on procrastination, students are taught to: (a)
distinguish between rationalizations for procrastination (e.g., “I work better
under pressure”) and real reasons (e.g., self-doubt); (b) recognize the
thoughts (e.g., “math confuses me”), feelings (e.g., fear) and behaviors (e.g.,
skipping class) that are provoked by potentially difficult situations (e.g., an
impending math midterm); (c) overcome the tendency to procrastinate by using
the four major strategies for achievement previously described; and (d)
effectively manage their time by creating a specially designed “to-do
checklist,” a self-regulatory procedure that facilitates planning, and
incorporates many of the substrategies.
In the
module on building self-confidence, the four techniques taught to
students: (a) regulating your emotional level, (b) seeking affirmation, (c)
picking the right models, and (d) “just doing it” are intended to create the
thoughts required for successful achievement (Bandura, 1997). In teaching students to take responsibility,
causal explanations and their properties, such as those described in
attribution theory, are used to show students the importance of focusing on
effort and intentionality as the explanation for their outcomes (Weiner, 1986,
1995).
—
The Cognitive Component: Many
have advocated techniques for teaching students to use cognitive strategies of
self regulation (e.g., Mayer, 1989,
2002) that include conceptual models for visualizing ways of solving problems,
and question-asking for extracting meaning from text (Robinson, 1961). These form the basis for the “search the environment”
and “use feedback” strategies to teach students how to learn from lecture and
text, prepare for exams, and write papers.
For example, students are taught to view information that is either
heard in lectures or read in text as “answers” to implicit questions. By making
those questions explicit through the construction of a “Q & A Outline”
(Tuckman et al., 2002), students learn both to schematize the information and
organize it into visual forms such as diagrams and charts. The outlines and diagrams
then help students organize and store their thoughts in long-term memory in
preparing for and taking tests, and in writing papers.
The
Strategies-for-Achievement instructional design is also unique and innovative.
Instead of instruction in a traditional class setting, the program is taught
using a blended, web-based instructional model called Active Discovery
And Participation thru Technology (ADAPT; Tuckman, 2002).
This model for teaching a web-based course in a campus-based computer classroom
combines the critical features of traditional classroom instruction: (1)
required attendance, (2) presence of an instructor, (3) a printed textbook (Learning and Motivation Strategies: Your Guide to
Success by Tuckman,
Abry, and Smith – Prentice Hall, 2002,) with those of computer-based
instruction: (1) class time spent doing computer-mediated activities rather
than listening to lectures, (2) a large number of performance activities rather
than just two or three exams, (3) self-pacing with milestones rather than a lockstep
pattern. The program includes over 200 “learning/performance activities,”
ranging from assignments and self-surveys to papers to portfolios, papers, and
postings on an online, asynchronous discussion board all of which are submitted
electronically and graded by teachers, who also provide feedback.
In
addition, students read A Hope in the Unseen, a biography of a young African
American, that describes his last year in an inner city high school and first
year in an Ivy League college, and write and submit four two-page papers that
analyze the young man’s actions and experiences relative to the four
Strategies-for-Achievement and eight sub-strategies.
The
course was originally designed for use at the university level, and students
completing it were shown to make significantly greater GPA gains than matched
controls (Tuckman, 2003). Based on a grant from the U.S. Department of
Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE), the
course software was revised and the course was introduced into urban high
schools.
Methods
The
Strategies-for-Achievement program was taught as a one term (18 week) course,
meeting four hours a week, called Strategies
for School Success, at three
large, urban high schools, two in one city and one in another. There were two
sections of the course in each high school with 10th-12th
grade students being selected by high school counselors to be representative of
the student body in terms of gender, ethnicity, and prior academic performance.
For each student selected for the course, a comparison student was identified
who was a match on gender, ethnicity, year in school, and prior grade point
average (GPA). In one of the high schools there were 69 students who took the
course and 69 matches, in the second 41 course takers and 41 matches, and in
the third 40 of each. The percentage of African American students in the three
samples ranged from 55%-90%; 55% of the students in the three samples were
females and 45% males.
Regular
high school teachers were assigned to teach the course in each school. The
teachers were trained by the researcher and his staff on both the conceptual
aspects of the course and the use of the required technology. The course
software, that included 216 learning/performance activities, was run on
Blackboard at all three schools and teachers were trained in its use. The
performance activities were completed and submitted online by the students and
graded online by the teachers. Students could then view their grades and
teacher feedback online. The researcher and his staff monitored the teachers
insofar as possible to determine the degree to which the course was being
taught in the prescribed manner (with particular emphasis on the teacher
keeping the students on task for the entire class period, and grading and
providing feedback in a timely manner).
After
completion of the course, students’ GPAs were computed for the school term in
which the course was taken, and were compared to the GPAs of the comparison
non-takers for that same term, using pre-term GPAs as a covariate. The data
from the three schools were analyzed separately.
Results
Analyses
of covariance of each data set separately revealed significant differences in
final GPA between course-takers and non-takers that favored course takers. In
the first high school, course-takers earned a GPA of 2.30 at the end of the
term, compared to a GPA of 2.12 for matched non-takers, yielding an F-ratio of
4.38 (p<.04). In the second high school, course-takers earned a GPA of 2.84
at the end of the term, compared to a GPA of 2.40 for non-takers, yielding an
F-ratio of 35.4 (p<.001). In the third high school, course takers earned a
GPA of 2.80 at the end of the term, compared to 2.39 for non-takers, yielding a
F-ratio of 29.04 (p<.001). These results are shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. GPA results for course takers versus matched
non-takers.
Conclusions, Discussion, and
Educational Importance
On the
basis of the results, it was concluded that teaching students the
Strategies-for-Achievement and their application to practicing time management,
building self-confidence, taking responsibility, managing their lives, learning
from lecture and text, and preparing for exams enabled them to achieve a higher
level of academic performance than comparable students not taught the
strategies.
However,
it must be pointed out that the process of running the course in the three
schools did not follow the plan precisely as intended, a phenomenon not
uncommon in conducting experiments in large, inner city high schools. In the
first high school, the principal insisted on adding to the class a component on
career education that was not part of the Strategies course, thereby reducing
the number of hours available to teach the strategies. In the other two high
schools, problems frequently arose with the technology, meaning a slow network
response and an intermittent network connection, as well as with classroom
management, meaning keeping students working on the course online instructional
activities during the full class period. Nevertheless, even when taught
imperfectly, the course had a significantly positive effect on student
achievement at all three test sites.
It would
appear, from the results of this study, that explicitly teaching learning and
motivation strategies to high school 10th-12th graders
enables them to perform better in school, particularly when these strategies
are taught in a way that allows them to actively practice and apply the
strategies as part of the learning process. Such increases in academic performance
may increase the likelihood of students graduating from high school and
continuing on to postsecondary education. Further research is needed to
determine whether taking the Strategies course indeed has a positive influence
on high school graduation rate and college admission and retention.
It is
recommended that high schools choosing to run the course advise and counsel
students into the course who have the ambition to pursue a college education,
but may lack the prerequisite strategies (as is often the case in
first-generation college-goers) and not fill it with students merely to assure
the necessary enrollment. In the latter case, many of those students tend to
drop the course.
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