Students’ perceptions of parental and teacher academic involvement: Consequences on achievement goals

The present study examined whether students’ perceptions of two major facets of parental and teacher academic involvement (i.e., academic support and academic monitoring), contribute to the process of students’ achievement goals adoption. French junior high-school students completed two questionnaires assessing first their perceptions of parental and teacher academic involvement, and then their achievement goals three months later. Factorial analyses showed that students differentiated parental academic monitoring from parental academic support, while predominantly perceiving their teacher academic involvement as reflecting monitoring. Multilevel modeling analyses indicated that, as expected, students’ perceptions of parental academic support were positively related to mastery goals while unrelated to performance goals. Also as expected, perceived academic monitoring was associated with performance goals, although the findings revealed an equal contribution of perceived parental and teacher involvement. This new insight about the antecedents of students’ achievement goals emphasizes how important is the role of parental and teacher academic socialization.     

Architecture students’ perceptions of their learning environment and their academic performance

Scholars have agreed that the way in which students perceive their learning environments influences their academic performance. Empirical studies that focus on architecture students, however, have been very scarce. This is the gap that an attempt is filled in this study. A questionnaire survey of 273 students in a school of architecture in Nigeria provided data for this pilot study. The perceptions of the students were best defined by the involvement of the students in their studies, the perceived support, and conduciveness of the learning environment. The students’ perceptions of their learning environment varied with their years of study, age and gender. Their perceptions of inflexibility of schedule, positive assessment, and fairness influenced the overall grades of students. The results suggests which aspects of learning environment that can be manipulated by architectural educators to improve the performance of their students. The study of the learning environment of architecture students still appears to be relatively unexplored. The value of this study therefore lies in its exploration of the perceptions of the learning environment from the point of view of students.     

Students’ opinions on blended learning and its implementation in terms of their learning styles

The purpose of this article is to examine students’ views on the blended learning method and its use in relation to the students’ individual learning style. The study was conducted with 31 senior students. Web based media together with face to face classroom settings were used in the blended learning framework. A scale of Students’ Views on Blended Learning and its implementation, Kolb’s Learning Style Inventory, Pre-Information Form and open ended questions were used to gather data. The majority of the students’ fell into assimilators, accommodators and convergers learning styles. Results revealed that students’ views on blended learning method and its use are quite positive.     

Students’ assessment preferences, perceptions of assessment and their relationships to study results

The purposes of this study are to gain more insight into students’ actual preferences and perceptions of assessment, into the effects of these on their performances when different assessment formats are used, and into the different cognitive process levels assessed. Data were obtained from two sources. The first was the scores on the assessment of learning outcomes, consisting of open ended and multiple choice questions measuring the students’ abilities to recall information, to understand concepts and principles, and to apply knowledge in new situations. The second was the adapted Assessment Preferences Inventory (API) which measured students’ preferences as a pre-test and perceptions as a post-test. Results show that, when participating in a New Learning Environment (NLE), students prefer traditional written assessment and questions which are as closed as possible, assessing a mix of cognitive processes. Some relationships, but not all the expected ones, were found between students’ preferences and their assessment scores. No relationships were found between students’ perceptions of assessment and their assessment scores. Additionally, only forty percent of the students had perceptions of the levels of the cognitive processes assessed that matched those measured by the assessments. Several explanations are discussed.     

Children’s cognitive ability and their academic achievement: the mediation effects of parental expectations

It is generally accepted that cognitive ability predicts academic achievement, and that parental involvement and expectations form part of the constellation of factors that predict their children??s academic achievement, particularly for families within the Chinese-heritage Cultures. Although a number of interactions between these parental factors have been proposed, the mediation effects of parental expectations on their children??s cognitive ability in predicting academic achievement are yet to be established. Data from 780 students from one primary school in Hong Kong and their parents were used to generate structural equation models to test the hypothesis that parental affective factors, as indicated by parental home and school involvement, parental beliefs of their children??s ability and parental expectations of their children??s academic scores, mediate the effects of student IQ score in predicting school achievement in English, Chinese and Mathematics. The results support the hypothesis that parents help their children to actualize their cognitive ability by directly communicating their academic expectations to their children.     

Students’ perceptions of the academic environment and approaches to studying in British postgraduate business education

Recent research on student learning in higher education has identified clear associations between variations in students’ perceptions of the academic environment and variations in their study behaviour. This study investigated a general theoretical model linking students’ demographic characteristics, perceptions and study behaviour with measures of outcome, and in particular, compared three accounts of the causal relationship between perceptions and study behaviour. Data were obtained from 469 postgraduate students at six British business schools. Path analysis was used to assess the causal relationships among the students’ age and gender, their scores on the Course Experience Questionnaire, their scores on the Revised Approaches to Studying Inventory and their ratings of general satisfaction with their programmes. This yielded evidence for the causal efficacy of most of the paths identified in the general theoretical model. In particular, as in the case of students taking more traditional academic subjects, there exists a bidirectional causal relationship between variations in students’ perceptions of the academic environment and variations in their study behaviour.     

Students’ academic motivation: relations with parental warmth,autonomy granting,and supervision

In this investigation we assessed the relationships between perceptions of parenting and student’s academic motivation and success. College students completed a series of questionnaires assessing perceptions of parental warmth, autonomy granting, and supervision, and perceptions of academic control. Findings revealed different models for males and females. For females, perception of control was predicted by parental warmth and supervision. For males, only parental warmth was a significant predictor of perceptions of control. Perception of control predicted grade point average for both males and females. Parenting probably influences the development of motivational beliefs during childhood and adolescence and these beliefs continue to be important into the college years. Additionally, our findings of gender differences suggest that the effects of parenting may be moderated by the child’s gender.     

Students’ images of two-variable functions and their graphs

This paper presents a conceptual analysis for students’ images of graphs and their extension to graphs of two-variable functions. We use the conceptual analysis, based on quantitative and covariational reasoning, to construct a hypothetical learning trajectory (HLT) for how students might generalize their understanding of graphs of one-variable functions to graphs of two-variable functions. To evaluate the viability of this learning trajectory, we use data from two teaching experiments based on tasks intended to support development of the schemes in the HLT. We focus on the schemes that two students developed in these teaching experiments and discuss their relationship to the original HLT. We close by considering the role of covariational reasoning in generalization, consider other ways in which students might come to conceptualize graphs of two-variable functions, and discuss implications for instruction.     

Parents’ perceptions of their child’s resilience and competencies

This study examined parental views of their child’s educability through the parents’ perceptions of their child’s resilience. The purposes of the study were: (1) to examine psychometric properties of the rating scale created to measure parental views of their child’s educational and psychological resilience, (2) to explore whether the parents’ views of the child’s resilience were related to their notions of the child’s competencies and (3) to examine how parents’ perceptions of their child’s resilience were related to the parent’s social position and the child’s gender. Data were collected by questionnaire from the parents of fifth-grade children (N=391). The parental rating scale consisted of three dimensions of resilience, all with satisfactory reliability. Parents’ views of their child’s resilience were related to their perceptions of child’s abilities and school success, suggesting that the parental rating scale had concurrent validity. The results also indicated that parents’ views of their child’s resilience were related to their gender and education and to the child’s gender. Furthermore, parents’ views of their child’s educational resilience, based on parents’ trust in their child’s internal capacities, were related to the parental definition of their child’s cognitive-verbal competencies, in particular.     

Are parents’ academic gender stereotypes and changes in them related to their perceptions of their child’s mathematical competence?

In the course of their child’s school years, a group of parents were asked to assess their child’s mathematical competence and indicate whether they endorsed the gender stereotype pertaining to it. Once the child had entered upper primary school, the consistent stereotypic parents tended to rate their boys’ mathematical competence higher than the parents of girls did. Additionally, the parents whose attitude turned into an anti‐stereotypical one perceived their girls’ mathematical competencies as higher than those of the boys, which was related to their perception that the boys’ competencies were getting worse while the girls’ competencies were getting better.     

University faculty members’ and students perceptions of university academic systems

There are no provisions for routine evaluations or rankings of the universities in the Federal Republic of Germany. Consequently, it has become a matter of magazines to carry out inquiries into the opinions of students and faculty members in order to assess the quality of education at German universities. One of the first studies of this type was carried out by one of Germany's most respected magazines, Der Spiegel. The results of this study, particularly the questionnaires and validity of the given response categories, were subject to vehement criticism. In this context the exploratory study described in this chapter was conceived. Students and faculty were asked to give their personal and individual views about the academic system at their given universities. In order to guarantee the subjectivity of each individual's frame of reference, the responses of students and faculty were recorded, analyzed, and compared by means of computer-assisted content analysis. The results will be used to validate quantitative instruments of inquiry and to formulate proposals for their improvement.     

College students’ perceptions of studying abroad and their readiness

This study aims to determine what college students believe is essential on studying abroad and investigates which programs they prefer for outbound study. The trend of globalization and expansion of higher education have resulted in changes for studying abroad programs in numerous Asian countries. In particular, the overprovided undergraduate and graduate education system in Taiwan raises questions on how college students perceive such outbound study. This paper collected survey data from 219 college students at 2 universities in Taiwan to analyze their opinions and levels of readiness on studying abroad programs. This study applied fuzzy methods to transform the data and interpret the results, and the findings showed that gender and college major influence student perceptions on the importance of studying abroad, as well as their readiness to study abroad. Typically, women exhibit more preparedness for studying abroad than their male counterparts. Following the expansion of higher education in Taiwan, more students are considering studying abroad programs for short-term stay in foreign countries. According to the patterns of perception, this study built fuzzy models to explain the consistency of importance and levels of readiness on studying abroad. The results reveal that fuzzy statistics can be used for proper interpretation of the factors influencing students to study abroad and their readiness.     

Teachers’ perceptions of their matched students

The purpose of the study was to investigate FD and FI teachers’ perceptions of their ‘matched’ students. The Group Embedded Figures Test was administered as a measure of cognitive style to four middle school teachers and 144 seventh and eighth grade students. The teachers rated their students on a five-point scale in relation to (1) the degree they liked the student, (2) the information they knew about the student, (3) the concern they had for the student, and (4) their rejection of the student. FI teachers were more positive of their matched students (FI) than were FD teachers.     

Students’ navigation of the uncharted territories of academic writing

Abstract

Many students enter tertiary education unfamiliar with the ‘norms and conventions’ of their disciplines. Research into academic literacies has shown that in order to succeed in their studies, students are expected to conform to these norms and conventions, which are often unrecognized or seen as ‘common sense’ by lecturers. Students have to develop their own ‘map’ of their programme's expectations in order to make sense of the seemingly mysterious practices they are expected to take on. This study, undertaken at a University of Technology in South Africa, details students’ perceptions of their writing difficulties and their attempts to navigate their way through various writing tasks. The findings reveal that students experience a range of difficulties and that the students often feel unsupported in their travails with academic writing.     

Comparing students’ self-discipline and self-regulation measures and their prediction of academic achievement

Using a multi-source, multi-measure research design involving 507 high school students and their teachers, we compared prediction of these students’ academic achievement by a composite of students’ and teachers’ measures of students’ self-regulation (SR) with a composite of students’ and teachers’ measures of students’ self-discipline (SD). Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that the SR composite was more predictive of students’ grade point average and performance on a state-wide achievement test than the SD composite. Confirmatory factor analyses showed that, although SD and SR latent factors correlated significantly, a two-factor solution provided an acceptable fit for the results. Structural Equation Modeling analyses indicated that the SR latent factor predicted both measures of students’ achievement significantly, but the SD factor did not predict either achievement measure significantly. No significant gender differences were found with students’ SD, SR, or achievement measures. These results suggest a path for integrating two relatively separate streams in self-regulation research on the basis of a well-established distinction between learning and performance processes.     

Students’ and teachers’ perceptions: initial achievements of a Project-Based Engineering School

A unified academic model based on the project-based learning (PBL) methodology was implemented, in the 2012–2013 period, in the School of Engineering at Universidad Europea de Madrid. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether teachers and students participating in the capstone projects feel that the objectives for which this methodology was designed for are being achieved. The data were collected through interviews to participants at the end of the PBL experience. The results are encouraging, as students seem to be more motivated, and they say that they are experiencing deeper learning, and have developed key competitive skills required for their professional lives. Findings also suggest that teachers face positively the PBL as a learning approach since they perceive that students obtain a deeper learning, develop transversal skills with the projects and are more engaged with their studies. Implications and recommendations for the future of the model are also discussed.     

How important is it to my parents? Transmission of STEM academic values: the role of parents’ values and practices and children’s perceptions of parental influences

The success of science education in classroom and out-of-school settings can be influenced by parents’ behaviours and STEM-related values. The present study investigated pathways in parent-to-child transmission of STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) values by examining at same time parents’ values and behaviours, along with their children’s perceptions of these parental influences. The study included 1071 students (M_age?=?12.15) and the same number of their parents. Path analysis revealed that children’s importance value of the STEM school fields was best explained by their perceptions of parental values and behaviours in STEM. On the other hand, parents’ self-reported values and behaviours had a weak effect in predicting children’s values, which can be explained by inaccurate children’s perceptions of their parents. The results suggest that parents more easily convey beliefs about the utility than the attainment value of STEM. Namely, parents’ utility value had a larger effect in predicting children’s value, partly mediated through children’s perception of parents’ encouragement of STEM interests. The study highlights the role of children’s perceptions of their parents’ beliefs and behaviours and the importance of communicating STEM-related values within the family. Practical implications for parents and science educators are discussed.     

Students ’ perceptions of science classes in the Philippines

This study used a modified version of the Perception of Science Classes Survey (Kardash & Wallace, 2001) to survey 7,885 grade school and high school students in different provinces in the Philippines regarding their perceptions of their science classes. Factor analysis revealed five dimensions of the students ’ perceptions that relate to different aspects of the teacher ’s pedagogy and the learning environment created by the teachers: (a) Learner-Centered Pedagogy, (b) Science Inquiry Activities, (c) Positive Affect and Attitudes, (d) Grades as Feedback, and (e) Support for Self-Learning and Effort. Factor scores were compared across grade levels and genders. The results indicate a decrease in science inquiry activities and the use of grades as feedback in the higher grades, but an increase in support for self-learning and effort, and also positive affects and attitudes. These trends were discussed in relation to possible problems related to teacher practices that may contribute to low student achievement levels in science. This research was part of a research project commissioned by the Japan International Cooperation Agency-Philippines.