Students’ Expression of Personal Control of their Learning Experience and the Importance of Their Remedial Actions by Dr. Mikael Powell

See:

https://digitalcommons.lesley.edu/education_dissertations/20 

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.

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.