See:
From reviewing the data, I found that I could identify a characteristic of
an individual who labeled their remedial responses important by how they
perceived who was responsible for their learning. Students who expressed their perception that
they were personally in control of their learning experience, generally rated
their corrective measures important, while students who proclaimed that things
other than themselves were responsible for their learning usually said their
remedial actions were unimportant. The
path to this finding began with an examination of classroom R4 data.
In
the classroom observation, all 32 students surveyed responded that they were
performing remedial actions in that class on that day and all said they did
them other days as well. General
categories of corrective actions presented to participants were
- leaning forward or sideways to see or hear;
- efforts to accommodate writing or the computer
at their seat;
- shifting to get comfortable;
- efforts to move through the classroom to work
in groups; and
- efforts to stay warm or cool enough.
Most students labeled their corrective measures as unimportant.
When asked how much their overall learning in that course was influenced by their remedial
responses (question
4 inquiries, from Chapter Three), the majority of them attributed little if any
importance to such responses.
Specifically, only 26.5% said
that their learning experience was influenced a lot by their remedial responses
to the classroom environment. The
remaining 73.5% of the students reported that their actions were neutral to not
important (this includes 10% neither important nor not important; 60% a little important,
and 3.5% not at all important).
However, since 100% of respondents
reported performing remedial actions, I analyzed the data to differentiate characteristics
between class members concerning the perceived importance of their actions. In classroom R4, thirty students
responded with their personal
level of importance of their remedial actions, which included seventeen students
reporting that they were “a little” important, nine students saying they were “a
lot” important, three participants saying they were “neither important nor not important,”
and one man responding that his actions were “not at all” important (see Figure
11 for comparisons of characteristics of these groups).
The
largest groups of students had very similar traits. The students who described their responses as
being “a little” or “a lot” important, mirrored the overall class responses
with the types of corrective measures undertaken and proportional quantity of
each type to their total actions.
Likewise, concerning race and ethnicity, the “a lot” group makeup, by percentage, was similar to the overall class and
the “a little” group, with over 50%
White (when one considers that a quarter of the “a lot” group listed White in their multicultural heritage). However, the “a lot” group was distinguished from
the others because it was nearly two-thirds male as opposed to about 56% for
the overall group (The “neither important nor not” group was two-thirds male as well, but it numbered only three
members). More markedly, however, the
overall class and each of the significance of corrective measures groups skewed
younger than the “a lot” students. Computing a linear trend line for each group
revealed the “a lot” group as the
only students with a positive slope toward an older composition. This means that the group of students that
rated their corrective actions important had more male students and was older
than students that were neutral or said
Gender
and level of significance of actions.
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their actions were unimportant. However, nothing else seemed to foretell
which students would perceive their remedial responses as being important.
In
Chapter Two, I discussed the role of classroom design in reinforcing the
institutional culture of control (Freire, 1970; Graetz & Goliber, 2002; Hebdige, 1979).
Therefore, pursuant to those theories, I compared responses from
students who stated that their remedial actions influenced their learning
experience “a lot,” to the rest of the class (see Table 5 which shows responses
from participants in classroom R4
observation reviewed for thematic categories).
Saldaña (2011) described an attitude
as “an evaluative way we think and feel about ourselves and
others, things or ideas. A belief is what we feel is true and
necessary based on our personal experience…”
(p. 105). For the “a lot” group,
I found that the most prevalent attitude was that “nothing can be done about
existing issues” (Paula, survey response, October 30,
2013).
A belief that was exclusive to this group was that if there is a
problem, you must do remedial actions for better learning. In other words, this
group felt that physical conditions in the room were unchangeable, therefore,
they must act to improve the learning experience. I used versus coding to conceptualize
responses in dichotomy as an aid to illuminate the essence of responses. Again, only this group identified with the
coding “sleep in class/not pay attention vs. good grades.” Furthermore, within the UEIF framework (which
is discussed in detail later in this Chapter), a student behavioral response to
the value dimensions of the university was described as acting as if they were
engaged in the educational process, which highlighted control issues and the misalignment
of student and faculty mores.
Those
findings, which largely characterized student power in the learning process,
led me to question the issue of control, so I reviewed all class responses for
statements relating to control over one’s learning experience, sorting them by “Controller
– Participant” (student), “Controller – Other,” or “Indeterminate.” I found that while every student in the class
was performing remedial actions, and about one-quarter
of the class said their actions were very important to their learning
experience, at least half of that group definitively expressed personal control
over impediments in their learning (classroom shortcomings). Only one person in this subgroup specifically
stated that the classroom environment controlled her learning (see Figure 12,
which illustrates expression of control and the importance of remedial actions).
The
remaining (approximately) three-quarters of the class, who rated their remedial
actions as neutral or “not at all” important to their learning, included one student
who definitively expressed that he was in control of the impediments to his
learning. This group had a large number
of students reporting elements other than themselves as governing their
learning experience, which I interpreted as experiencing a degree of powerlessness,
or in opposition to a self-directed learning process “in which individuals take
… responsibility for,
and control of, their own learning” (Towle & Cottrell, 1996, p. 357; Knowles,
1988). These researchers tout this
ability as an important component between undergraduate and graduate education
for scholastic achievement. Also, refer
to Figure A5, in Appendix A, which indicates participants, corrective actions
reported, response to how much their overall course experience was influenced
by the remedial responses they performed in the course, and personal expression
of control over their learning experience.
Red and blue text within a participant tag indicates variance to the
typical class relationship of influence of remedial actions and expressed
control of learning. Therefore, in
classroom R4, a student’s outlook on the
importance of his or her actions to make the classroom more effective for
learning is generally aligned with their perspective on who most controls their
learning in the course. This connection
is more congruous than what remedial actions they performed, how often, or how
many.
As I mentioned previously, there were two outliers who
contradicted the trend that when a preference is expressed, those with an
personal sense of empowerment over their learning rated their corrective
measures important, and those who reported other persons and issues as
controlling their learning evaluated their own actions to be of little to no
significance.
In
this class, which largely equated focus with learning, Olivia reported on the hard-copy
survey that it was hard for her to concentrate in class because her seating did
not allow her to use her computer. Indeed,
three weeks later in the follow-up online survey, Olivia responded that because
the classroom was outdated the projection screen was illegible from some
positions in the room. Unlike Olivia,
other students in this class who expressed supplementary issues like those as affecting
their ability to learn, also said that their actions to shift, relocate and
note-take manually, were of little consequence to their overall learning
experience. However, twice Olivia
responded that her corrective measure influenced her overall learning “a lot”.
Olivia
is an atypical member of the “a lot” group, being younger than most of that
cohort, her gender is in the minority of that group, and those students had the smallest percentage of members of her
race. Additionally, when asked how important
class time was to her total experience
of learning in the course, she responded that it is “neither
important nor not important” because, “a lot of work is done outside of the
classroom.” (Olivia, survey response, November 20, 2013). Perhaps those factors influenced her
contrary responses.
Alternately, Noah
expressed control of his learning, by assessing that “since we cannot move the seats
in class when we work in groups, we must position ourselves as best we can to
work effectively with each other” and because of the seating conditions in the class
“I usually am forced to bring my laptop.
I tend to do better when I write my notes out. It helps me to remember what I learn” (Noah,
survey response, October 30, 2013). Other
students who reported similar sentiments valued their personal actions to make
their environment more conducive to learning; however, Noah listed that his
efforts were only a little important to his overall learning experience in the
course. Despite the variance, Noah did
seem more attuned to the “a little” group.
He was the mode age of that cohort (younger than most “a lots”), and his
race was in the overwhelming majority of the “a little” group. Perhaps these similarities with that group began
to explain his responses to the finding.
So, generally, I contend that those students who
situated the control of their learning in the class closer to themselves are
those who said that their actions to remedy the environment represent an important
and real effort. Those that put control of their learning farther from
themselves are those who said that their measures to correct the room are unimportant
to their learning.
In this research, I
interrogated the data for expressions of control over the impediments to the
learning experience. Further research
can organize my queries into power issues within the classroom with the construct
of locus of control (LOC), which is
defined as follows:
(A) generalized expectancy for internal or external control of
reinforcements. ‘Internal control’
refers to an individual’s belief that an event or outcome is contingent on his
or her own behavior or … ability. The
belief that an event is caused by factors beyond the individual’s control… has
been labeled ‘external control.’ (Stipek & Weisz, 1981, p.102)
It is a construct of the social learning theory of personality, and there
have been many studies over the last 50 years concerning LOC and achievement in
higher education (Aspelmeier, Love, McGill, Elliott, & Pierce, 2012;
Krampen & Wieberg, 1981; Stipec & Weisz, 1981; Curtis & Trice,
2013). Anderson, Hattie and Hamilton
(2005) warn of the dangers of dividing “the world into externals and internals,
typically equating internal with good and external with bad” (p. 518). I, too, was careful not to denigrate any
groups in my study. Of course, how one
considered his or her personal control over impediments in learning is not
polemic, and differs by course. In the
recommendations and future research section of Chapter Five, I suggest ways to
move forward based upon this new finding, while respecting an individual’s
personality. Also, it is important to
consider that this analysis was from participant responses to various
environmental questions, not targeted, measured psychological inquiry into aspects
of LOC, using, for example, Rotter’s Generalized I–E test (Rotter, 1966). Nevertheless, the general idea of personal
influence over educational outcomes is a manifestation of the concept of locus
of control of learning.
