Adolescents in school - Universiteit Utrecht

Lecture 8 

Part 1 – adolescents in school 

Schools: 

• Educate young people: prepare them for adulthood 

• Define young persons’ social world 

• Context in which they spend most of their waking hours 

• Shape their psychosocial development 

Classroom factors: 

• Classroom climate 

• Teachers' expectations 

• Instructional quality 

• Emphasis on performance vs learning (grades) 

• Friends' engagement 

• Peer norms 

Social organizations of schools 

• School transition at age 12 

• Educational tracks 

• Select school 

• Admission by lottery 

• School size 

Part 2 – Dutch school system 

NL: freedom of education 

• Guiding principle in educational governance is article 23 of the Constitution: 

• Education shall be the constant concern of the Government 

• All persons shall be free to provide education (start their own school), without prejudice to the authorities’ right of supervision 

• Then: protestants vs Catholics 

Now: many different school types 

• Based on religion 

• Based on teaching philosophy 

• Relatively easy to change teaching principles as long as it meets the quality criteria 

Consequences of freedom of education for classroom climate 

• Diversity educational approaches 

• Relatively large differences in learning outcomes in different schools 

• Consistency values home & school 

• Segregation: similar peers 

• “free-market system” (popularity of schools varies > competition between schools) 

NL: early educational tracking 

• Level on which they receive their teaching 

• Red countries: single school for both primary and lower secondary education 

• Pink: transition between primary and lower secondary education, but still with common core curriculum for students 

• Blue: differentiated branches/tracks 

Decrease in combined educational tracks in the 1st year of secondary school 

• E.g., havo-vwo 

Consequences of early educational tracking for classroom climate 

• Instruction adapted to level of understanding > teaching is more efficiently 

• Similar performing classmates 

• Achievement constrained by level of instruction 

• Less contact between different social groups 

• Lower status of vocational pathways 

Selection based on? 

• Test scores standardized achievement test 

• Also based on achievement motivation and work ethic of the student 

• Lower level advised to students with low SES parents > unequal opportunities 

But: reading level at age 15 overlaps (PISA) 

• Maybe students become different because we put them in different tracks 

How is the Dutch system doing? 

• PISA scores 2018: Netherlands score average on performance, but in regard to variation, there is more variance in comparison with other countries 

Conclusion: the way a society organizes a school system shapes the experiences of adolescents in the classroom. 

Part 3 – school transition 

School transition involves many changes 

• Procedural changes 

• e.g., “knowing how to change classes” 

• Longer distance to school, how to use a locker, lunch at school 

• Academic changes 

• more subjects, stricter grading, tracking (ability grouping), more homework 

• Social changes 

• new classmates, new (and more) teachers, being the youngest again 

What do children worry about? (UK) 

• Social changes: bullying, peer relations 

Decline in engagement, motivation and performance 

• In many countries, students’ motivation and engagement (on average) decline across the school transition 

• School grades also drop 

• Scores on standardized achievement tests do not decline 

• More to do with stricter grading, than with actual achievement 

Cumulative change theory 

• Theory: transitions will be harder for children who experience several life changes at the same time (e.g., pubertal development, change in resident, start dating, family disruption) 

• Comparison of two different school systems: 

• Transition between grade 6 and 7 

• Kindergarten to grade 8 in one school 

• Findings: more life changes > lower grades (for both girls and boys) 

• More life changes > lower self-esteem (girls) 

Person-environment fit theory 

• Theory: negative changes in motivation and engagement after the school transition result from a mismatch between the environment and adolescents'’ needs 

• It is not the transition itself that causes problems, but school environment does not fit the need of adolescents. 

Basic needs (self-determination theory) 

Dutch context 

• Inspectorate of education (classroom observation in 127 schools) 

• Low autonomy 

• 97% of students feel safe 

• Positive student-teacher relationships 

• Not challenging, low expectations, rarely deep learning > students tend to be not very motivated 

• Dutch adolescents relatively positive about school, but only 37% of the adolescents did grade this question with a ‘yes' 

Impact of a school transition 

• Difficult to study (need natural experiments) 

• Depends on the specific context (country, school) 

• But also on individual experiences 

Individual differences in experiencing the school transition 

• Not all students experience the same degree of stress 

• depending on academic and psychosocial problems pre-transition 

• Depending on social support (peers, parents) during transition 

• Depending on abilities to cope with changes 

• Example  

• Self-esteem development in the school transition 

• No mean level change of self-esteem across the transition 

• not all students experience the same degree of stress 

• Self-esteem in primary school > self-esteem in secondary school 

• When peer acceptance was lower than expected > decrease in self-esteem 

• Depending on abilities to cope with changes 

• Neuroticism: emotional instability 

• Example item: I see myself as someone who can be tense 

• Hypothesis: reactivity of self-esteem higher for children high on neuroticism 

• Findings: only children high on neuroticism experienced a drop in self-esteem when their acceptance was lower than expected 

Remember: 

• School transition does not have uniform effects on adolescents 

• Adverse consequences likely for: 

• Vulnerable students 

• Students moving to impersonal schools 

• Students with few sources of social support 

Dutch context: more transitions? 

• Teenage school rising 

Part 4 – impact of grades 

Characteristic for average class in secondary school is “grade addiction”: at the start of the class the teacher announces that it is important to attend well because a test will soon be given. When the teacher does not say this, the students will ask whether they will receive a grade 

The classroom experiment 

• prof. Dylan William: changing practice from giving grades to giving feedback/comments 

• Bases his idea on the work of Buttler & Nissan, testing the effects of grades with written feedback or no feedback 

• Written feedback: positive and negative points 

• > better performance + higher task interest 

• 2nd study: written feedback only > better performance + higher task interest 

• Difference low vs high achievers 

• High achievers stayed interested in the task as long as they knew they would get a grade for it (> reward) 

• Recent meta-analysis (2019) 

• Grades vs. No feedback: they do perform better, but students in no feedback condition: higher motivation (intrinsic motivation) 

• Written feedback vs. Grades: higher performance + higher motivation 

Natural experiment comparing grades vs no grades – Klapp (2015) 

• Klapp compared students who received grades in primary school to students who did not 

• She found a negative main effect of grading 

• Strongest effect for low-ability students: graded low-ability students received lower subsequent grades through grades 7-9 and has lower odds to finish upper secondary education, compared to ungraded low-ability students 

Possible explanations 

How did you feel on seeing your report card for the first time? 

• Positive and negative affects 

• These are independent dimensions 

Contextual influences on motivation, engagement and achievement 

• Teachers (expectations, relationship quality, classroom management, teaching strategies, performance vs. Mastery orientation) 

• Peers (friends selection & socialization, peer norms, connectedness) 

• Parents (Values & expectations, involvement in school, parenting style, quality of home environment) 

Looking at classroom context 

• Children who perceived the performance norms in their class to be high, were more affectively reactive to their grades, which resulted in a stronger indirect effect of grades via negative affect on emotional engagement. 

Conclusion 

• Grades are not only indications of performance 

• Grades have social and motivational impact 

• Awareness of the psychological impact of grades may help teachers to understand their students’ engagement in school 

• Do the benefits of grades outweigh the costs?