scholarly journals Scholars on the sidelines : a phenomenological study of high-achieving elementary students in southwest Missouri

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Kerri Cox

High-achieving students are those who enter the classroom ready and able to learn. They demonstrate their abilities by earning high grades in their coursework and by receiving high scores on standardized tests. The purpose of this phenomenological inquiry was to articulate the lived experiences of high-achieving elementary students in suburban schools in southwest Missouri. How would high-achieving elementary students, their parents, and their classroom teachers describe the academic experiences of high-achieving elementary students in suburban schools in southwest Missouri? Specific research probes looked at the degree to which these students received differentiated instruction and sought to uncover the classroom experiences and academic structures that best support and most hinder these students? growth. The findings show that students have limited differentiated opportunities. In speaking to parents, students, and teachers, the following classroom structures and academic structures emerged as those that most hinder learning: (a) mixed-ability classrooms, (b) a focus on standardization, (c) teaching to the middle, and (d) personality clashes with teachers. The following classroom structures and experiences emerged from the data as those that support high-achieving students: (a) pursuing their passions in and out of the classroom; (b) supportive teachers; and (c) confronting and conquering academic challenges. Implications from this study could provide researchers, educators, and administrators more insight into the needs of high-achievers and recommendations for supporting these students in the classroom.

1993 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 268-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darcia Narváez

Research exploring the relationship of intellectual aptitude to moral judgment has indicated that, as a group, those with a high intellectual aptitude score significantly above their age peers on measures of moral judgment. These data support the contention that intelligence is a “general factor” that cuts across domains. Some theorists have advocated an alternative view, that intelligence is domain specific. In looking at high achievers, the current study offers support for both views by reporting data that indicate a dependence of moral judgment precocity upon high intellectual achievement. As a group, the high achieving students scored higher on the Defining Issues Test's Principled score. However, there was a wide variation in scores among the high achievers, indicating that apparent intellectual aptitude was not enough for high scores in moral judgment. This variance, along with the fact that no low achiever received an unusually high score, supports the “independent domains” hypothesis of intelligence.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel M. Schwartze ◽  
Anne C. Frenzel ◽  
Thomas Goetz ◽  
Anton Karl Georg Marx ◽  
Corinna Reck ◽  
...  

Existing research shows that high scholastic boredom is correlated with a range of undesirable behaviors and personality traits and that the main antecedents of boredom are being over- or under-challenged. No study to date, though, seems to have systematically compared students who are highly bored and low-achieving (thus, likely over-challenged) with students who are highly bored and high-achieving (thus, likely under-challenged). Hence, merely knowing that students are highly bored might be insufficient for drawing conclusions about students’ behavior and personality, without taking their achievement level into account. We, therefore, investigated if low- versus high-achieving students who experience strong mathematics boredom show different behaviors and personality traits. The sample consisted of 1,404 German secondary school students (fifth to 10th grade, mean age 12.83 years, 52% female). We used self-report instruments to assess boredom in mathematics, behavior (social and emotional problems, positive/negative affect, emotion regulation), and personality traits (neuroticism and conscientiousness). In comparing highly bored students (more than one SD above M, n = 258) who were low versus high achievers (as indicated by the math grade, n = 125 / n = 119), results showed that there were no mean level differences across those groups for the behavior and personality trait constructs, with only three exceptions: conduct problems and expressive suppression (higher for low achievers) and positive affect (higher for high achievers). In conclusion, our results suggest that high boredom can occur in both low and high achieving students and that bored low- and high-achievers show largely similar behaviors and personality profiles.


Author(s):  
Michael Grimley ◽  
Richard Green ◽  
Trond Nilsen ◽  
David Thompson

<span>Computer games are purported to be effective instructional tools that enhance motivation and improve engagement. The aim of this study was to investigate how tertiary student experiences change when instruction was computer game based compared to lecture based, and whether experiences differed between high and low achieving students. Participants consisted two cohorts enrolled in a first year university course (Cohort 1, traditional: male=42, female=17; Cohort 2, computer game: male=42, female=7). Cohort 1 experienced course content as traditional lectures, Cohort 2 experienced course content embedded within a computer game. Csikszentmihalyi's experience sampling method was used to sample experiences of students for each cohort during instruction. Results showed that the computer game group were more challenged and valued the activity more than the traditional group, but were inclined to wish they were doing something else. High achieving students during game mode showed greater concentration but found it harder to concentrate and found game mode more sociable and lecture mode more boring. High achievers perceived greater success for lecture mode and found lectures more satisfying. Individual profiles of high and low achieving students for each mode indicated that games afforded better experiences for low achieving students but poorer experiences for high achieving students.</span>


PLoS ONE ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (11) ◽  
pp. e0241671
Author(s):  
Manuel M. Schwartze ◽  
Anne C. Frenzel ◽  
Thomas Goetz ◽  
Anton K. G. Marx ◽  
Corinna Reck ◽  
...  

Existing research shows that high achievement boredom is correlated with a range of undesirable behavioral and personality variables and that the main antecedents of boredom are being over- or under-challenged. However, merely knowing that students are highly bored, without taking their achievement level into account, might be insufficient for drawing conclusions about students’ behavior and personality. We, therefore, investigated if low- vs. high-achieving students who experience strong mathematics boredom show different behaviors and personality traits. The sample consisted of 1,404 German secondary school students (fifth to 10th grade, mean age 12.83 years, 52% female). We used self-report instruments to assess boredom in mathematics, behavioral (social and emotional problems, positive/negative affect, cognitive reappraisal, and expressive suppression), and personality variables (neuroticism and conscientiousness). In comparing highly bored students (more than one SD above M, n = 258) who were low vs. high achievers (as indicated by the math grade, n = 125 / n = 119), results showed that there were no mean level differences across those groups for all variables. In conclusion, our results suggest that high boredom can occur in both low- and high-achieving students and that bored low- and high-achievers show similar behaviors and personality profiles.


2021 ◽  
Vol 91 (4) ◽  
pp. 433-456
Author(s):  
ZID MANCENIDO

In this article, Zid Mancenido examines how high-achieving students are socialized to believe that they should not become K–12 classroom teachers. Research has well established that academically successful students are often disinterested in teaching as a career, yet there has been little attention to how this disinterest is developed through the process of career exploration. To address this gap in the literature, Mancenido conducts a narrative inquiry based on interviews with high-achieving recent college graduates and graduating seniors. He presents six representative vignettes to demonstrate how high achievers learn through explicit and implicit signals that teaching is not appropriate for someone like them. This process is social, with parents and peers playing a significant role in shaping beliefs. These findings suggest that policy efforts to recruit more high achievers into teaching may benefit from more focus earlier in the career exploration pipeline.


2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
S.J. Brown ◽  
S. White ◽  
N. Power

Using an educational data mining approach, first-year academic achievement of undergraduate nursing students, which included two compulsory courses in introductory human anatomy and physiology, was compared with achievement in a final semester course that transitioned students into the workplace. We hypothesized that students could be grouped according to their first-year academic achievement using a two-step cluster analysis method and that grades achieved in the human anatomy and physiology courses would be strong predictors of overall achievement. One cohort that graduated in 2014 ( n = 105) and one that graduated in 2015 ( n = 94) were analyzed separately, and for both cohorts, two groups were identified, these being “high achievers” (HIGH) and “low achievers” (LOW). Consistently, the anatomy and physiology courses were the strongest predictors of group assignment, such that a good grade in these was much more likely to put a student into a high-achieving group. Students in the HIGH groups also scored higher in the Transition to Nursing course when compared with students in the LOW groups. The higher predictor importance of the anatomy and physiology courses suggested that if a first-year grade-point average was calculated for students, an increased weighting should be attributed to these courses. Identifying high-achieving students based on first-year academic scores may be a useful method to predict future academic performance.


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