Reasons for the Strange Decline

Abstract:Since 2000, the Shanghai Commercial School (SCS) has delivered various business curricula from TAFE New South Wales' (NSW) South Western Sydney Institute (SWSI). Until recently, one such SWSI program was made up of two parts: a linguistic section (Years 1 and 2) followed by an Advanced Diploma of Business in Marketing (Years 3 and 4). Based on years of teaching on both parts of this joint program, the researcher identified a strange phenomenon: some students, upon entering the Business program, showed a strange and significant decline in their academic achievement. To identify possible reasons for this, the researcher selected fourteen such students and via observations and semi-structured interviews, tried to identify the factors which accounted for this marked decline in their academic results. Two key factors were identified: psychological factors and the impact of assessments.

Key Words:reasons;study achievements;decline

中图分类号:H059 文献标志码:A文章编号:1673-291X(2010)11-0204-03

Introduction

Shanghai Commercial School and TAFE New South Wales' (NSW) South Western Sydney Institute (SWSI) began a joint education program in 2000. Today, the Institute has seven other similar joint education programs in six cities across Mainland China.

Every year, hundreds of students study and graduate from these joint programs. To comply with the requirements of the Australia Training Quality Framework (ATQF), all SWSI's offshore programs must be delivered and assessed in English. While this suits Chinese students who have a natural flair for foreign language, for many students, the challenges posed by learning a new subject (i.e. business/marketing) in a foreign language are monumental.

Based on the researcher's observations, approximately one seventh (1/7) to one sixth (1/6) of students in the SCS/SWSI joint program appear to experience declines in their academic achievement between finishing the final year of their English studies and beginning the first year of marketing.

Age may be a factor for this decline, since students enter the language portion of their studies when they are only 15 or 16 years of age, so by the time they enter business, they are 17 or 18 years old. This is a pivotal period for any adolescence, often characterized by mood swings and erratic behavior.

Another possible explanation for this decline stems from a learner's language ability.Many of the students do well in their linguistic assessments, but do much less well once they are required to do reports, presentations, tests and other assessments in their marketing subjects. A lack of life skills and real world experience is partly to blame for this.It seems that as soon as they start to fail marketing assessments, students give up and find it difficult to re-motivate themselves. They become absent-minded in class - often sleeping or talking, or indulging in computer games. A few may even transfer out of the joint program, or drop out of school altogether.

The researcher hopes to understand this sub-set of students and shed light on the factors which lead to their lack of motivation and academic achievement in marketing subjects.In order to achieve these research goals, the researcher identified fourteen students who showed signs of being part of this at risk group. These students were observed informally and then interviewed individually, using a set of prepared questions. Together, these research methods were intended to answer two big questions: What were the main reasons that made the students change? What specific factors were responsible for the decline in their academic achievement?

With answers to these questions, it is hoped that teachers and leaders on the similar joint program will be able to implement more effective measures to curtail this negative trend.

Identification of the Participants

Since the researcher has been teaching on this joint program for a total of five years (two years in linguistic and three in business), she was able to identify a small group of students who seemed to have become de-motivated. This was based on informal observations during scheduled lessons, consultations with other class and subject teachers, and analysis of the students' assessment results across multiple subjects.Information about these students was then collected in two main ways: through face to face interviews and notes made during class observations. More details about the face to face interviews follow.

Collecting Information

Prior to meeting with the students individually, the researcher created a list of questions in order to guide the interview process.These questions follow:

Conducted in casual, relaxed places, like KFC or a teahouse, each interview lasted between thirty to fifty minutes. As the researcher had built up a good and close relationship with the participants, they were able to be quite open and honest when answering the interview questions. With the students' permission, the researcher recorded each interview onto audio cassette.

After summarizing and analyzing the transcripts of the interviews, the researcher concluded that two main factors influenced the participants and made them change in Years 3 and 4 of their study: psychological factors and the impact of assessments.

I. Psychological factors.

This consists of four specific factors. They are:

(1)Pressure from school policies.

According to SCS policy, only when students pass all subjects in the Sino-Australian program can they get both the TAFE and SCS/Chinese certificates. Any student who fails one or more subjects is unable to receive either certificate. Many research participants felt that this policy placed enormous pressure on them, especially during final exam time.Such pressure often had a negative impact on their final results, which only increased the likelihood of this fear of not receiving either certificate.

(2)Influences of learning methods and from the field experience.

Learning is a complex process and can be achieved in a variety of ways, including rote learning and learning by doing.Learners learn best when they use the method that suits them best. According to Bandura's social cognitive learning theory, learning occurs in two ways. The first way is enactive learning - this happens when one learns a task by doing it. The second type of learning - vicarious learning - occurs when one learns about a task by observing others performing or discussing it.According to Bandura, this second method of learning is not as valuable as the former. [3]

According to the interview results, all participants seemed unfamiliar with the first method. Most of the students' knowledge and skills were obtained by observing others performing or discussing it (vicarious learning). This is not surprising, given the research context.

A related question to the vicarious learning method is: whom do students usually observe? This was researched and most said friends or people around them - their fields. When more probing questions were asked about this, the following persons were identified: school leaders, teachers, parents, classmates and friends outside their home-room class. Participants also stressed that if school leaders and teachers were too busy to talk with them, students would seek assistance elsewhere. But sometimes, their parents were too busy with their own lives and they ignored them, or, there was a generation gap. On top of all of this, some parents will persistently blame their child whenever low marks were received for assessments. Another influential group is classmates. Often, those in the same circle of friends have similar levels of academic achievement. For able students, this is good - since they can motivate each other to excel academically. But for less able students, making friends with like-minded people can be detrimental to academic success. For students who experience a decline in academic achievement in Years 3 and 4 compared to Years 1 and 2, they are less likely to be concerned if their friends are students with a similar laid-back attitude. Such friends are not really interested in study and therefore don't mind poor assessment results. Sometimes this mentality is infectious, with one or more students with a negative vibe impacting negatively on others in the class.

(3)Low level self-efficacy.

According to Bandura (1997), self-efficacy is a judgment of one's ability to perform a task within a specific domain. High efficacy in one setting does not guarantee high efficacy in another domain, however, self-efficacy is linked reciprocally with behavioral outcomes and environmental cues. High self-efficacy positively affects performance, whereas good performance, in turn, positively affects one's sense of self-efficacy .[3] Self-efficacy also indirectly affects future learning by predisposing students to engage in challenging tasks and to persist longer despite initial failures[4]

After analyzing interviewee's responses, the researcher found that 97% of the participants considered their self-efficacy to either be very low, or not high enough to fulfill the study tasks in the last two years of their 4-year study.The remaining 3% of participants didn't think they had the interest in the task.According to Bandura (1997), low levels of interest lead to low level self-efficacy which affects the participants' performance negatively.

(4). Attributional factors.

Attributional responses vary along three causal dimensions: locus of causality, stability and controllability .[5]Almost all the participants attribute their outcomes to the lack of related abilities and interest, the high level of the task difficulty, parents' negative responses, and lack of help from the teachers、the parents and the peers, most of which are uncontrollable. Outcomes viewed as uncontrollable often promote anxiety and avoidance strategies, whereas those under control lead to increased effort and persistence.[3] Both have been substantiated in this research as being part of the cause of the students at risk problem.

II. The Impacts of Assessments.

The use of assessments in guiding instruction has long been advocated, assessments are very necessary as teaching and learning tools. A variety of assessment types are used in the Sino-Australian program, including reports, oral presentations and class tests. Students receive grades accordingly. Whether or not these assessment methods are appropriate is a significant issue. Dylan William and Paul Black [6] (1998) proved that with the available evidence 1) the assessment methods which teachers use are not always effective in promoting good learning, 2) grading practices tend to emphasize competition rather than personal improvement, and 3) assessment feedback often has a negative impact, particularly on low-achieving students, who are led to believe that they lack "ability" and so are not able to learn. Most of the participants had the similar feeling towards assessments. In short, there is evidence that there is room for improvement when it comes to choosing and using assessments.

Let's take one method of assessment - self evaluation - as an example. Teachers at SCS may ask students to self-evaluate as part of a formal assessment. Students' self-evaluation is a cognitive strategy which provides an avenue for the paradigmatic shift in assessment, where the focus is on learning rather than simple measurement of that learning.This is because the psychological processes of meta-cognition map onto student self-evaluation. When students are engaged in evaluating their own work, they are thinking about what they have learnt and how they learned it. They are consequently more aware of their thinking and learning processes, which encourages a deep, as opposed to surface, approach to learning. [7] These are processes which need to be fostered if we wish students to succeed academically. Students are judging and interpreting when they evaluate their own work or their peers' work. What is important in this domain is system-thinking. That is, rather than teaching students how to solve a problem that is presented to them, they are taught to examine why the problem arises and how it is connected to other problems. Skills, knowledge and attitudes that are valued need to be given the appropriate emphasis in the evaluation of students' achievement. The time that is allocated to prepare students and to conduct evaluation for summative purposes needs to be balanced with the amount of time that is allocated for formative learning purposes. Teachers are encouraged to employ various assessment methods to foster the independent learning. Teachers should try to connect assessment with learning closely.

There are some limitations to this research. Since the participants are teenagers, their moods are not very stable, and it is very possible that they may be keeping some true reasons to themselves. The effectiveness of the interviews may also be influenced by other factors, including the weather, the participants' mood in the interview or the atmosphere of the various interview occasions. It will be more convincible if more students from the similar programs in other schools or cities are selected as participants.

The outcomes of this research will be useful to help the participants be self conscious enough to supervise、control 、evaluate and improve themselves, academically. All schools with similar joint program can benefit from this research. The paper should be useful to school leaders, teachers, and parents as it will help all of these groups to better understand this special group of at risk students and provide guidance on how to better deal with such learners.

References:

[1] Major, B., McCoy, S.K., & Quinton, W.J.. Antecedents and Consequences of Attributions to discrimination: Theoretical and Empirical Advances[C]. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, San Diego, CA: Academic Press. 2002,Vol.34:251-329.

[2] Horwitz, E.K., Horwitz, M.B. & Cope, J. Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety [J].Modern Language Journal,1986:70.

[3] Roger H. Bruning; Gregory J. Schraw ; Monica M Norby ;Royce R.RonningCognitive Psychology and Instruction[M].4/EMerrill USA , 2004.

[4] Frank Pajares Self-Efficacy Beliefs in Academic Settings [J].Review Of Educational Research 1996,66:543-578.

[5] Weiner Bernard , Human Motivation [M]. New York:Springer Verlag 1985.

[6] Paul Black; Christine Harrison; Clare Lee; Bethan Marshall;Dylan William, Working Inside the Black Box: Assessment for Learning in the Classroom[M].1998:20-21.

[7] Entwistle, N. ,Teaching and the Quality of Learning[R].Report of a seminar held on 25 November, London: Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals of the Universities of the United Kingdom and Society for Research into Higher Education National Commission on Education, 1993:231.

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I would like to show my deepest gratitude to Geoffrey Mather, (Director of Studies-Business on the joint program between TAFE NSW SWSI and Shanghai Commercial School), who has provided me with valuable help.My sincere appreciation also goes to the teachers and students in Shanghai Commercial School, who participated in this study with great cooperation.