Reading and Writing Instruction for Academically At-Risk Deaf and Hard of Hearing First-Year College Students

Objective/Research Question: Students with disabilities, including deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students, are enrolling in college at rates higher than in the past with most of them pursuing an associate’s degree. For DHH students, their reading ability is a predictor of their academic achievement in college. However, more than half of DHH students enroll in remedial reading and writing college courses indicating they are not reading and writing at a college level and putting them at-risk for non-completion. In addition, remedial reading and writing courses often do not count for credit toward graduation and may hinder rather than support student progress. One way to mitigate the need for remedial coursework during college is to provide the remedial instruction in a low-stakes manner through summer bridge to college programs. The purpose of the present study was to measure the effects of remedial reading and writing instruction provided through a summer bridge program on first-year, academically at-risk DHH college students’ ( N = 20) reading and writing abilities. Methods: Using a pretest/posttest design, we implemented remedial reading and writing instruction for 2 hours a day, 5 days a week for 5 weeks. Results: Upon the completion of instruction, the student participants’ reading and writing skills improved. Conclusions/Contributions: Our findings may encourage researchers to attempt remedial instruction through summer bridge programs with other populations with disabilities or English language learners.

Demystifying Subjective Well‐Being of Academically At‐Risk Students: Case Study of a Chinese High School

Student subjective well‐being (SWB) is increasingly incorporated into today’s education policies and positive education movements. There is a growing interest in how well schools promote student well‐being, especially for disadvantaged students, e.g., the academically at‐risk, and which factors affect this process. This study investigates how teachers and academically at‐risk students perceive SWB and its influential precursors in a high school in China. The influential precursors in the present research were allocated into four dimensions, namely contextual factors, school factors, family factors, and individual factors. Via semi‐structured individual interviews with 12 teachers and 18 students for about one hour and content analysis of the interview data, the responses revealed that while students tended to have a superficial understanding of well‐being, traditional concepts about studying, blind filial piety, peer relations, and self‐efficacy were important factors shaping and influencing their SWB. These findings can inform the development of inclusive education policies concerning student SWB and the intervention and prevention systems of schools in both local and international contexts. Recommendations for organising lectures for parents and implementing programs providing instruction on SWB‐related skills for students are proposed to support academically at‐risk students, aiming to achieve the educational goal of success for all.

Active Learning, Students Who Are Academically At-Risk, and Institutional Classification

In this study, self-reported survey results from the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) 2017 and 2018 are examined to understand the extent to which students who were academically at-risk and academically prepared engaged in active learning versus traditional learning methods across bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degree-granting institutions. The NSSE Report Builder Public (2018) was utilized to create a data set from first year student responses selecting for teaching methodologies, Carnegie Institutional Categories, and student academic level as determined by course grades. Researchers used chi-square analyses to establish associations between the variables; all chi-square results were statistically significant except for one; there was no association found between students who were academically at-risk and coursework that emphasized evaluative learning activities. Next, researchers analyzed the frequencies of types of learning activities reported by students. Students who were were academically at-risk reported lower frequencies of using active learning techniques and tended to engage in study for fewer hours across all institution types. From this analysis, suggestions for improving the instruction for students who are academically at-risk include increased use of active learning teaching strategies for the various types of degree-granting institutions.

Towards a Mentoring Model That Enhances Academic, Social, and Cultural Capital in Turbulent Times

Academically at-risk students may doubt their ability to persist and succeed because of some or all of the following: socioeconomics, low self-esteem, identity crises, negative family histories, socio-emotional concerns, poor living situations, or negative messages about school and education. Currently, the aforementioned issues are further compounded by turbulent times, which include but are not limited to a pandemic that disproportionately affects people of color and the impoverished, along with continued civil unrest and demands for rapid societal change. Therefore, this population would benefit from the enhancement of its academic, social, and cultural capital. In order to accomplish those goals simultaneously, the authors propose a mentoring model that integrates aspects of advising, tutoring, mentoring, peer-to-peer interaction, metacognition, positive psychology, current events, and emotional wellness to support academically at-risk students in their pursuit of academic and personal excellence.

Direct Measure Assessment of Learning Outcome–Driven Proactive Advising for Academically At-Risk Students

Creating advising curricula through backward design ensures that learning objectives remain central to the process and enables those in advising units to design comprehensive assessment plans for continued curricular improvement. By incorporating measures to observe student learning directly, advisors can evaluate their curriculum objectively to ensure students achieve desired learning outcomes. An advising unit created a proactive advising curriculum for academically at-risk students through backward design that includes multiple assessment measures. Students in four categories of academic risk were targeted for intervention. Through the evaluation of direct-learning evidence gathered through assessment, the advising unit improved the advising curriculum, showing the process for intentional curriculum design and assessment to improve student learning.

ACADEMICALLY AT-RISK HIGH SCHOOL

This investigation queried the phenomenological perspective of the school counselor within the high school setting. The counselors’ perspective was sought in this qualitative investigation to determine the impact of bullying on the academically at-risk population. The literature at present has neglected a population of high school students. The omitted population is the academically at-risk population. Researchers have identified many sub-populations of the “at risk” school category that traditionally included: culture, ethnicity, gender, race, religion, and sexual orientation. The academically at-risk student is another category and is inclusive of traditional “at risk” students. This population experiences (1) a grade point average below 2.0—C, (2) absenteeism more than 15 days in a 90-day semester and (3) behavioral issues that impact successful matriculation. At present, no research has been conducted about the academically at-risk high school student, and how bullying, contextually, impacts students, and how their counselors understand and perceive bullying.