This study tests the effectiveness of a program designed to use extrinsic incentives in improving the motivation of disadvantaged students to achieve academic success. This study seeks to determine whether the specific extrinsic rewards provided in the program actually improve the success of students on classroom tests. A secondary purpose of the study is to assess the extent to which that success, if achieved, becomes itself a reinforcement sufficient to maintain continued success in the classroom. Ignoring age and grade, students from the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades were grouped by their skill level in mathematics and assigned to an individual teacher. The study was conducted during four consecutive two-week periods. Base-line data were obtained during the first two-week period of both experimental and control students under regular classroom conditions. Extrinsic incentives were applied to the experimental group during each of the following two-week periods and identical measures were taken during the same period of both the experimental and control groups. The analysis-of-covariance statistical treatment was used to compare changes on test success. The .05 level of confidence was held as the standard for statistical significance. Two extrinsic incentives, a free movie and a monetary reward, were employed to bring about improved performance on mathematical tests. Separate and combined effects of the incentives were examined for the total group and for subgroups based on sex, ethnicity, and initial mathematics ability.

Student Number : 9906703K - MA research report - School of Psychology - Faculty of Humanities / Higher education and more specifically access to higher education has been a critical issue in the post-apartheid South Africa. With the aim of increasing access to higher education in order to achieve equity and redress, more students have been entering the higher education sector (73% of students are black and more than 50% are women) and a participation rate of 18% has been achieved. However, graduation rates remain low and attrition rates high, therefore the concepts of access and academic success need to be seen in the same light (Badsha, 2004). The aim of the present study is to look at a cognitive predictor of academic success, that is, the PTEEP academic literacy test. The purpose is to measure the validity of the PTEEP language proficiency test, as a predictor of academic literacy, on the University of Witwatersrand Humanity students’ academic success. The research approach for the study may be described as exploratorydescriptive in nature and was conducted within a quantitative framework. The participants comprised of 63 students from the 2004 cohort of students that gained admission to the university by means of the alternative selection procedure utilized by the Wits Faculty of Humanities. Descriptive and inferential statistics are employed to summarise and report the sample data in a meaningful way. The analysis of the present research focused on the PTEEP test, the specific PTEEP clusters, and academic success ratings in conjunction with variables such as gender and specific degrees within the Faculty of Humanities. The major findings of the present study indicate that there is no significant relationship between the PTEEP academic literacy test and academic success, and furthermore the PTEEP academic literacy test does not appear to be a good predictor of academic performance. These results are inconsistent with a large body of research indicating the predictive validity of the PTEEP test. However, the results do suggest that ‘Genre’, a subtest of the PTEEP test, demonstrates a strong relationship with academic success and is a significant predictor of academic success in this study. The results indicate the further exploration into cognitive developmental theory and the role it may play in developing admissions tests. Future research also needs to include other personal and situational variables over a longer period of time that could influence cognitive development and academic success.

Thesis advisor: Rebekah Levine Coley / Theories of upward mobility argue that academic and employment success grant individuals improved health, yet emerging evidence suggests that striving for such mobility in the context of marginalization may actually dysregulate physiological stress responses and compromise health. It is still unclear whether these associations operate as a function of cumulative exposure to risk (including both socioeconomic and racial/ethnic marginalization), or whether they would emerge outside of such collective risk. Further, little is known about how the school context, one of the most central contexts in adolescent development, affects associations between mobility and health, despite evidence that opportunities for socioeconomic comparisons or for discrimination at school may further exacerbate these associations. Drawing on data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a longitudinal survey of a nationally representative school-based sample of adolescents in the United States (N=14,797), the current study sought to clarify links between achievement and physiological health. Multilevel regression analyses considered prospective associations between achievement and health while attending to potential variation in links across the socioeconomic spectrum and across racial/ethnic groups. Additionally, school-level factors were taken into account and explored as potential augmenting mechanisms in these links. Findings suggested promotive links between achievement and physiological health, but also suggested that such links were not shared broadly by all youth. Although links did not vary across the socioeconomic spectrum, Asian American youth demonstrated some greater health payoffs of achievement compared to their non-Hispanic White peers, while non-Hispanic Black and Mexican American youth largely experienced reversed links. These results suggest additional evidence that striving for academic achievement while experiencing racial/ethnic marginality may engender dysregulation of the stress-response system. Thus, findings are discussed in relation to the social and historical contexts that may contribute to such divergent links. However, the school-level factors considered did not moderate links among achievement, individual characteristics, and physiological health, pointing to the importance of future research considering alternate social and contextual mechanisms in these relationships. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Counseling, Developmental and Educational Psychology.

Magister Educationis (Adult Learning and Global Change) - MEd(AL) / As a Nigerian, I became interested in investigating how Nigerian students, from different cultural backgrounds are able to integrate and persist in their academic programmes. I used Tinto‟s (1993) Longitudinal Model of Institutional Departure as a foundation for my conceptual framework. I adopted a qualitative research approach as this provides opportunities for interpretations by both participants and the researcher. I purposively selected 20 Nigerian students who were at different stages of their Master‟s programmes at a university in the Western Cape province of South Africa, but only 12 students were available and interviewed. The data reveals a significant relationship between intercultural peer group interactions, formal social integration and student persistence, while there was no significant relationship between intercultural peer group interaction, informal social integration and student persistence. Furthermore, informal social integration was partially related to formal academic integration and student persistence. Finally, it emerged that informal academic integration was also strongly linked to social integration and academic success. Due to the limiting nature of a research paper, the research has been restricted to the Nigerian experience to allow an insider perspective.

The challenge of underprepared students' entering America's colleges and universities is not new. Because of their "open door" policies, community colleges are more likely to enroll students who are not college prepared. This retrospective study focused on the performance of students who had completed required developmental education courses compared to the performance of students without developmental requirements. The study examined developmental education success measures for five cohorts of first-time degree-seeking freshmen each tracked for a six-year period enrolled at Walters State Community College located in Tennessee. The success measures compared included grade point averages earned in college-level mathematics and English courses, cumulative college-level credit hours earned, cumulative college-level grade point averages earned, and number of graduates. Existing data, gathered from the college's student information database, were analyzed through the application of two univariate approaches--the t-test for independent samples and the chi-square. The study found that nondevelopmental students earned statistically higher grade point averages in college-level mathematics and statistically higher cumulative college-level grade point averages. The study found that significant statistical differences did not exist between the two student groups in grade point averages earned in college-level composition and in graduation rates. The study's findings relative to the comparison of average cumulative college-level credit hours earned by the two student groups were mixed. Although statistically significant differences were found for some performance variables, they were not so large as to conclude that the college's developmental education program was ineffective. For this study to be useful for future decision making, it must be compared with results of future studies designed to measure performance and effectiveness. Therefore, it is recommended that the analysis be updated annually. Practitioners at other state colleges should undertake research directed at establishing the level of overall effectiveness of developmental education across the state.

Administrators in a school district in north central Kansas implemented the Teacher Expectation and Student Achievement (TESA) professional development program (PD) to address ineffective instructional practices of K-12 teachers. TESA PD was designed to build and promote teacher-student interactions, enhance students' academic performance, teach students self-discipline, and improve the class environment so that students can work and study in diverse settings. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore the classroom experiences and perceptions of 10 teachers who integrated teaching interactions from the TESA program into their daily lessons. Brophy and Good's expectation theory holds that teacher interactions with students are impacted by exchanges between teacher and student and served as the conceptual framework. Qualitative data were gleaned from in-depth interviews, observations, and questionnaires and were analyzed using open coding and category construction for patterns, relationships, and themes. Findings indicated that TESA PD assisted these 10 teachers in how to build relationships with their students; how relationship building impacted teacher-student relationships; and how teacher expectations of students, regardless of students' achievement level and diverse backgrounds, impacted student academic performance. To improve relationship building of teachers and students, it is recommended that the TESA PD program be ongoing. Implementing the TESA interactions may contribute to positive social change by allowing students to connect to and communicate with the teacher; accept direction and praise from the teacher;, and trust the teacher, which, ultimately may lead to higher levels of academic success.

The purpose of this study is to explore and identify the attitudes and perceptions of faculty, staff and administrators within a California community college system on what promotes academic success for former foster youth enrolled in courses at that college campus. Participants for this study were contacted via the college’s email list serve in which they were asked for consent to participate in the study’s electronic survey. A total of 41 respondents participated in the study and provided responses to the self-administered questionnaire that was sent campus wide to the college’s faculty, staff and administrators. This research study was conducted in support of the college’s Guardian Scholars (GS) program and was aimed at identifying ways in which the campus community supports former foster youth students in navigating the college pathway process. The outcomes of this study highlighted respondents top two most identified factors that promote academic success for former foster youth based upon order of importance. Survey respondent of this research study ranked access to stable housing the number one most important factor followed by financial aid as the second most important factor to the academic success for former foster youth enrolled in college courses in the California Community College system.

Performance-based funding is becoming the norm in higher education. High-impact practices like first-year seminars hold promise for improving some of the key metrics in the funding model, such as first-year retention rate and first-year institutional GPA. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship of retention rate and institutional GPA between first-time-in-college (FTIC) students who completed a first-year seminar and those who did not. Additional data regarding pre-college experiences and expectations for college were investigated to gain insight into retention and academic success behaviors of FTIC students. Three years of data including institutional Beginning College Survey of Student Engagement (BCSSE) scores, high school GPAs, enrollment data, and student grades were collected. Due to a significant difference in high school GPA between summer and fall admits, all analyses were conducted separately for each group. For both summer and fall admits, results from the chi-square tests of homogeneity and independent samples t tests indicated no significant difference in retention rates or mean institutional GPA between FTIC students who completed a first-year seminar and those who did not. Logistic and multiple linear regression tests were conducted to determine whether FTIC student retention and institutional GPA could be predicted by pre-college experience and expectations as measured by the BCSSE. For fall admits only, two of the nine BCSSE scales, expected academic perseverance and perceived academic preparation were significant predictors for retention. For predicting institutional GPA, summer and fall admits shared two significant predictors from the BCSSE: high school learning strategies and importance of campus environment. For fall admits only, there were three additional significant predicators: high school quantitative reasoning, expected collaborative learning, and perceived academic preparation. The results of this study may encourage higher education institutions to consider assessment of their own first-year seminars. The impact of a first-year seminar may be improved by developing curriculum that addresses the skills, experience, and expectations unique to each institution’s first-year students.

This research examines the possible correlations between a computing student's learning preference and their academic success, as well as their overall satisfaction with their major. CS and IT seniors at BYU were surveyed about their learning preferences and satisfaction with their major. The research found that IT students who are more reflective in their learning preference tend to have higher grades in their major. Additionally, it found that student age and their parents' education level were significant players in their academic success. However, there were no correlations found between major satisfaction and academic performance.

The aim is to empower all students to achieve academic success by overcoming the educational barriers that exist within the school system. This thesis examines what sociological factors are at play that encourages the academic success of Black students. The emphasis will be to identify how other Black students can replicate the success of their high achieving peers. Another theme in this thesis focuses around the idea of success and who it belongs to versus which groups of learners are ignored. Other related themes look at the power of educators to transform the lives of students where schooling is viewed as a family approach offering hope for all stakeholders. Furthermore, the resiliency of Black learners and their ability to rise above racial pressures and adversity is an important theme that addresses the need for policy to change and the implementation of anti-racist strategies.