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Article 1
Boesel.D.(2001). Student attitudes toward High School and educational expectations.
Objective
The objective of the article is a study on student disaffection with high school where it
examines changes in student’s attitudes towards school over that past 25 years and related them
to educational expectations. The objectives are focus on the importance of high school, good
job after later life, did they like the school and courses they take. It also focuses on the negative
attitudes about school either to support or engage in anti-school behavior.
Problems
The monitoring data on student support for anti-school behavior ( support for cheating,
support for making teachers angry, and encouragement to do things teachers wouldn’t like) are
consistent with the hypotheses in some ways but not in others. By 1999, consistent with
expectation, students in the high-school-only group were significantly more likely than those in
the college-bound group to say that their classmates would like it if they cheated a on a test or
if they made teachers angry and to say that their friend encourage them to do things teachers
wouldn’t like. The surprising find is that on two of these three items (cheating, making teachers
angry) the affirmative responses of students expecting to get some education after high school,
but less than four years increased as much as those of the prospective high school graduates.
Findings
The data from monitoring the future tended to support these hypotheses, but the results were
not fully consistent, and the divergences are interesting. With some exceptions, in both 1976
and 1999 college-bound students were more likely than prospective high school graduates to
regard their education as relevant to the future and have positive attitudes toward school, and
less likely to support anti-school behavior.
In comparing the responses of students in academic, general and vocational programs, the
analysis usually found the expected patterns in future orientation, support for anti-school
behavior and damage to school property in 1999 for academic and vocational students, but not
general education students. The data on student attitudes toward their courses were in the
expected direction, but usually not significant. As expected, the different between academic
and vocational students were greater in 1999 than in 1976. A suggested reason for this parity is
that at the time new college graduates were not doing well in the labor market and the
prospects of high school vocational graduates were relative bright.
More broadly, there has been a decline in positive attitudes and an increase in negative
attitudes and one negative behavior among high school senior in general. Although the left-out
groups tend to show more of this shift, all the groups examined here participated in it.
Generally, this article is easy to understand because the language used is too simple, but
it difficult to understand the finding because too many figures and it is confusing the writer to
interpret the findings and data.
Issue of concern in Malaysia
In Malaysian the contemporary problematisation of youth transitions has led to a
growing perception of 'youth-at-risk' and has intensified the regulation of, and the intervention
in, youth practices and behaviours by authoritative powers. According this has resulted in a
pervasive condition of 'governmentality', in which young people are encouraged to engage in
self-shaping practices in order to comply with societal norms of appropriate or acceptable
behaviour. As some researchers have noted, a 'moral panic' regarding young people, focussing
on the notions of either 'youth-in-trouble' or 'youth-as-trouble', would certainly seem to
underpin concerns about a number of youth practices in contemporary society .For example,
the problematisation of youth unemployment or rising youth crime, as well as young people's
involvement in unhealthy or anti-social behaviours such as underage sex, drinking, smoking, or
drug use, among others, are all apparent causes for concern. Moreover, they are perceived to
point to a need for intervention programs designed to provide young people with appropriate
guidance towards achieving the skills, values, and attitudes required to make successful and
acceptable transitions to adulthood
As was noted earlier, such 'multi-faceted problems' in association with the rapidly
changing social and economic climate of the Malaysian are perceived to be significant factors
in youth disaffection. However, it should not be assumed that there is a direct/causal
relationship between the complexity of young people's social worlds and the demonstration of
disaffected behaviour because, as a number of researchers have pointed out the majority of
young people are adept at managing an impressive range of demands and pressures without
becoming disaffected. Numerous reasons have been cited to account for the incidents of
disaffection evident in schools. For example, increased pressures and competition caused by
the accountability of schools and teachers with the advent of league tables, as well as the
reinforcement of the standardisation of teaching and pedagogy through national assessments,
exams and curriculum, have been suggested as key factors in generating disaffection among
both staff and students .In addition, a number of researchers have pointed to the difficulties
caused by an inadequate or irrelevant curriculum which simply fails to engage young people
as well as cultural conflict between home and school a negative school environment and the
'marketisation' of schools brought about through recent reforms . Moreover, several researchers
within the sociology of education have identified the school as a highly structured environment
in which both space and time, as well as young people's behaviour, are closely regulated and
have suggested that young people's resistance within school represents an attempt by them to
seize power in a situation in which they are, essentially, powerless.
Article 2
Ingrid Harrington (2008). The motivation of boys who leave school early: impact of teachers.
Objective
This research highlighting on boys experience problems at school in terms of learning,
behavior, achievement and participation when compared to girls. This article reports on a study
exploring boys’ motivation to leave school early on the basis of an opportunistic sample of 22
boys aged 16 in Queensland. The article explores the issues surrounding boys’ early school
leaving, and make link between their experiences with teachers at school to their early school
leaving decision.
Problems
Their study reported that boys had left school early claimed that schools provided a non-
stimulating environment that had no discernible relation to the wider community or the adult
world to which they were beginning to gain access, a lack of support and referral to appropriate
agencies to assist them with problems in their personal and academic lives. Thirdly, the
existence of negative teacher/student relationships that were propped up by rules and
regulations, which prevented then from expressing themselves as adult and responsible
members of the school community.(Holden and Dwyer 1992, p.15)
Trent and Slade (2001) highlighted that over half of boys believe that their dissatisfaction
and lack of motivation in school is due in part to the impact of teachers on the engagement,
performance and retention of boys. Firstly, school often pushed boys into a downward spiral of
disaffection, resistance, resentment, anger and retaliation that for many boys was too hard to
stop. Secondly, school regularly pushed the rhetoric of education and thirdly, too many
unsuitable teachers who create or exacerbated the boys’ problems.
Findings
The finding shows that the student powerlessness where the boys begrudged how teachers
were able to deny them a personal sense of power and control over the school day, from which
they reported experiencing feeling of frustration and sense of powerlessness. Their main
grievance tended to focus around being forced to comply with authority, with no real avenue to
successfully challenge, negotiate and discuss it. The majority of boys admitted to struggling
academically and tented to shift onto the teacher for not successfully attending to their learning
needs. They claimed it was not a lack of effort on their behalf that resulted in their poor
academic performance, but rather a lack of caring and insight from the teacher to assist them in
learning as epitomized by this next excerpt. The boys explained their understandings that their
levels of motivation to learn, overall engagement and participation in class dwindled to the
extent that their interest for learning vanished based on the teachers’ lack of attention to their
learning needs.
Generally, this article is easy to understand even thought it uses bombastic words. The writer
felt that this article is 100% blame of teachers attitudes and less motivation given to the
students especially to the boy in the classroom.
Issue of concern in Malaysia
In Malaysian the contemporary to an apprehension about the general behaviour of young
people there have been concerns that disaffection is increasingly becoming a problem within
schools. To support this claim politicians, academics and professionals have pointed to
statistics on behavioural issues such as truancy, exclusion and educational attainment. For
example, it has been argued within recent parliamentary debates that the rate of truancy, as
measured by the number of young people who skip school, has risen by 15% since 1997, and
25% in secondary schools specifically .
These figures are particularly worrying in the context of research which has shown that two
out of three young people who are permanently excluded from secondary school will never
return to full-time mainstream education (McConville, 1998). For those who are attending
school, however, the picture is not necessarily brighter. The period of youth, more specifically
adolescence, is traditionally considered a significant time in the human developmental process
and for the construction of understandings of self in relation to others (Hendry et al, 1993).
However, as a period in which individuals make the complex transition from childhood to
adulthood, adolescence can also be perceived as a time of 'natural' disaffection in which young
people are susceptible to crises in these construction processes and are likely to experience
conflict or stress (Heathcote-Elliott & Walters, 2000). A number of authors have expressed
concern that, in contemporary Western society, the extension of this transitional phase, in
which young people are held between the restrictions of childhood and the increased freedom
of adulthood for longer periods of time, has meant that the social experiences of youth are now
characterised by intense contradiction and confusion (Kelly, 1999; Wyn & Dwyer, 1999;
Smith, 2000, Steer, 2000).
The increased individualisation of modern life, which is seen to have 'dissolved' traditional
patterns of social reproduction (e.g. the structure of family networks), is itself perceived to
have compounded this problem and increased the complexity of the personal and social
development process for young people (Giddens, 1991; Beck, 1992; Heathcote-Elliott &
Walters, 2000).
Article 3
Kamala.Raj.(2001). Causes and structural effects of student absenteeism: a case study of three
south African Universities.
Objective
The aim of the study is to investigate the extent of student absenteeism in selected university
in south Africa. The main objectives are to explore the reasons why student absent themselves
from classes and the implications of student absenteeism. The study revealed that student
absenteeism is rampant in the university under study due to reason such as lack of subject
interest, poor teaching strategies by lectures, unfavourable learning environment, too much
socialization, part-time jobs, poor relations with the lectures and inverse relationship between
student absenteeism and course performance.
Problems
All the respondents 100% reported that they had missed classes several times during the
semester in which the study was conducted. The major problem of the case study were due to
part-time jobs or other work related commitments. From the responses, it is clear that socio-
economic factors play a significant role in the absenteeism problem. An important issue that
comes to the fore here is that lecture attendance is affected by factors well beyond the student
control. This study establish the most students who reported experiencing absenteeism include
foreign students, male students, students from poor family background, students from single
parent families and self-sponsoring students.
Findings
From these findings, it is clear that socio-economic factors play a significant role in the
absenteeism problem. An important issue that comes to the fore here is that lecture attendance
is affected by factors well beyond the student control. These findings do not only enhance our
understanding of student attendance patterns but they also affect student pass rates and general
throughput rates. Indeed, several student have established that a strong correlation exits
between student attendance to lectures and, or learning sessions and general pass rate and or
throughput rates.(Steyn and Niekerk 2002). As demonstrated by Williams (2002), student
absenteeism is one of the strongest indicators of student who are at risk of dropping out of
school. It is clear that when student do not attend a scheduled session, caution should be
exercised not to simply misconstrue this as a mere signal of lack of motivation or some form of
deviant behaviour on the part of students.
This article is easy to read and understand. The simple English language is use in this article.
Generally, this article had stated the problems and the solution or recommendations the
problems that arise.
Issue of concern in Malaysia
In Malaysian the contemporary of disaffection is a long-standing one, and several
researchers have noted that it has featured strongly in government policies across Europe since
the 1970's (Heathcote-Elliott & Walters, 2000; Andrews & Andrews, 2003). Closer to home,
Long and Sanderson (2001) have commented that tackling disaffection is very much part of the
UK government's current agenda on social exclusion, providing the rationale for a great deal of
their spending on sport and leisure.
The need to address disaffection and social exclusion among young people is based upon a
concern for a 'lost generation' which, having been failed by the education and employment
systems, has disengaged from society. These young people have been referred to variously as:
'NEET' (Not in Education, Employment or Training), the 'underclass' or 'Status Zer0' youths
(Williamson, 1997), and it was believed that they totalled approximately 161,000 in 1999
(Social Exclusion Unit, 1999). Various initiatives and policies have been designed to support
and re-engage these young people, for example New Start, New Deal, Learning Gateway, the
Connexions Service, Positive Futures, Youth Offending Teams, Youth Inclusion Programmes,
Neighbourhood Support Fund (see Steer, 2000 for further information on these initiatives), and
pupil referral units (PRUs).
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Article 4
Clive harber(2008)
Objective
The purpose of this article is to provide some examples of the ways in which schooling is an
unattractive and hostile environment for learning that discourages both attendance and positive
participation. This article is concerned with the fourth with discourse the role that school plays
internationally in perpetrating disaffection with itself.
Problems
The problems are stated as the school buildings themselves not safe for the students such as
unhygienic toilets, falling down and failure to protect from earthquakes and fire. The failure of
school to protect children from bullying is another significant disincentive to attend. Bullying
can take many forms like physical violence, threats, name-calling, sarcasm, spreading rumours,
persistent teasing, exclusion from a group, tormenting, ridicule, humiliation and abusive
comments. However, gender and sexuality are also significant factors in school refusal and
drop out. Some teachers abused their authority to demand sexual favour from girls in exchange
for good grades, preferential treatment in class or money. Homophobic bullying is also a
serious problem in school.
Findings
The findings are that schooling would be organized to prepare future workers with the
subordinate values and behaviours necessary for the modern bureaucratic, mass production
workplace and existing social order regularity, routine, monotonous work and strict discipline.
This authoritarian model of schooling with its origins in state formation, modernization and
social and political control gradually extended globally from European societies and Japan
through colonization where the key purpose of schooling was help to control indigenous
population for the benefit of the colonial power.
In this authoritarian situation of relative powerlessness and neglect of their human rights pupils
can be mistreated violently or be influenced by potentially violent beliefs because the dominant
norms and behaviours od wider society are shared, or at least tolerated and not challenged by
many adults in the formal education system.
This paper has argues that one significant reason for this is the experience of schooling, which
for many pupils can be distinctly negative and even dangerous.
This article is easy to read and easily understand because the words are very simple. The article
has been represented in clear and in detail. All the problems and the findings are clearly stated
with the citation. When the writer read the article, the writer felt shocked according to the
students problem and the school problems.
Issue of concern in Malaysia
In Malaysian the contemporary there are several programs, funded both by government
departments and independent organisations, that have been developed to occupy young people
in positive (and pro-social) ways in their spare time; e.g. the 'Splash' schemes and activities run
through the Youth Charter for Sport (www.ycs.co.uk) or Youth Justice Board (www.youth-
justice-board.gov.uk).
The 'Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility' model (Hellison, 1995) is another
example of such a program. It is based largely on the teaching of constructive principles,
particularly those associated with personal well-being (effort and self-direction) and social
well-being (respecting others' rights and caring about others). These values are seen to
represent levels of awareness through which young people progress, and which represent their
growing sense of personal and social responsibility; respect, participation, self-direction, and
caring.
In addition, the model includes an outward-looking element through which the young people
are encouraged to apply these values outside of the program itself. This approach is not
intended to be taken as a rigid model but rather as a framework to help structure activity
programs, and other authors have adopted a similar approach in bringing together elements of
various models in order to develop more focussed, relevant interventions. 'Sport for Peace'
(Ennis et al, 1997; Ennis, 1999), for example, is based on both 'Peace Education' research
(Carson, 1992) and the Sport Education model outlined above (Siedentop, 1994), and includes
a focus on equity, inclusion and conflict negotiation as well as developing a sense of self and
social responsibility.
This program is intended to improve the physical education context for girls, taking the
emphasis away from a traditional format, in which boys often dominate (Ennis, 1999), and
allowing them to re-engage with physical activities in a more inclusive, constructive and
cooperative environment. These programs are all built upon the principle, alluded to earlier,
that sport and physical activity are ideally suited to facilitate personal, social and moral
development in young people.
Task 2
Introduction
This study identified a sample of 30 primary students from standard 6 USM from S.K. LKTP
Bukit Goh, Kuantan Pahang and investigated their general level of adaptation to the system of
education in schools. Identification was carried out using a questionnaire strengthened by
systematic observation of distinct students' behavior in classrooms. The students were then
tested using the Perceived Engagement/Disaffection in School questionnaire to determine their
adaptation to the system of education in schools. The characteristics of students who adapted
well to school were compared with those who were less well adapted on the following
variables; self-acceptance, acceptance of others, types of giftedness, academic motivation,
creativity, peer relations, home background, communicative competence, and gender. The
students were generally well adapted to school, perceiving themselves to be positively engaged
in classroom learning. They have high self-acceptance and acceptance of others indicating a
positive self-concept and high self-esteem, but rather low levels of academic motivation in
general. The sample was highly creative, generally popular with peers, and had good
communication skills. The sample was largely from advantageous family backgrounds, both
educationally and financially. An analysis on different types of produced five types of gifted
students in the study: successful, challenging, underground, angry, and autonomous. As for the
importance of the problem, there are at least two aspects. In some times and places this
population becomes a source of violence -- youth gangs, football hooliganism, shop window
breakage, and skinhead attacks on racial minorities, gays, or other targets. But second, whether
violent or passive, the precipitation of a sub-class of young people with no skills, no jobs, and
no futures is a huge social cost for the societies that produce them.
Definition
Student engagement occurs when "students make a psychological investment in learning.
They try hard to learn what school offers. They take pride not simply in earning the formal
indicators of success (grades), but in understanding the material and incorporating or
internalizing it in their lives.It is increasingly seen as an indicator of successful classroom
instruction, and as a valued outcome of school reform. The phrase was identified in 1996 as
"the latest buzzword in education circles. Students are engaged when they are involved in their
work, persist despite challenges and obstacles, and take visible delight in accomplishing their
work. Student engagement also refers to a "student's willingness, need, desire and compulsion
to participate in, and be successful in, the learning process promoting higher level thinking for
enduring understanding. Student engagement is also a usefully ambiguous term that can be
used to recognize the complexity of 'engagement' beyond the fragmented domains of cognition,
behaviour, emotion or affect, and in doing so encompass the historically situated individual
within their contextual variables (such as personal and familial circumstances) that at every
moment influence how engaged an individual (or group) is in their learning.
Sociological explanations of the phenomenon
Student engagement is frequently used to, "depict students' willingness to participate in
routine school activities, such as attending class, submitting required work, and following
teachers' directions in class." However, the term is also increasingly used to describe
meaningful student involvement throughout the learning environment, including students
participating curriculum design, classroom management and school building climate. It is also
often used to refer as much to student involvement in extra-curricular activities in the campus
life of a school/college/university which are thought to have educational benefits as it is to
student focus on their curricular studies. In a number of studies student engagement has been
identified as a desirable trait in schools; however, there is little consensus among students and
educators as to how to define it. A number of studies have shown that student engagement
overlaps with, but is not the same as, student motivation.
Definitions usually include a psychological and behavioral component. Student
engagement is used to discuss students' attitudes towards school, while student disengagement
identifies withdrawing from school in any significant way. One method that has been gaining
popularity in University teaching is the creation or encouragement of learning communities
(Zhao and Kuh 2004). Learning communities are widely recognized as an effective form of
student engagement and consist of groups of students that form with the intention of increasing
learning through shared experience. Lenning and Ebbers (1999) defined four different types of
learning communities:
1. Curricular communities which consist of students co-enrolled in multiple courses in
the same field of study.
2. Classroom learning communities that focus on group learning activities in the
classroom.
3. Residential learning communities that are formed off-campus that provide out of the
classroom learning and discussion opportunities.
4. Student-type learning communities that are created for special groups of students.
Within learning communities, students are able to interact with peers who share similar
interests and stimulate conversation about the topic. Such conversations are beneficial because
they expose the members of the community to new ideas and methods. Students that are a part
of such communities are therefore able to generate and construct their knowledge and
understanding through inquisitive conversations with peers, as opposed to being given
information by the instructor. This type of engagement in the field leads to a deep
understanding of the material and gives the student a personal connection to the topic (Zhao
and Kuh 2004).
Organizing classrooms into learning communities allows instructors to constantly
gather evidence of student learning to inform and improve their professional practice. They use
common assessments and make results from those assessments easily accessible and openly
shared among members of the team in order to build on individual and team strengths and to
identify and address areas of concern. Results are then used to identify students who are
experiencing difficulty and need additional time and support for learning as well as students
who are highly proficient and require enrichment and extension. Learning community
programs also improve students' interpersonal dialogue, collaboration, and experiential
learning within the context of diversity, these programs address a decreasing sense of
community and connection and allow students to relate their college-level learning to larger
personal and global . Here I'm mostly interested in the processes of neglect and social-
economic disadvantage that play into the mentality of some young people, leading to the
formation of an individual social psychology that brings about the low-level anti-social
behavior that is observed. Basically -- why do some young people drop out of the process of
gaining an education, building a career, forming a family, and looking forward to the future,
and instead spend their time hanging out in the streets. The skinhead phenomenon adds another
element that is also worth understanding but is not the primary interest here a degree of
organizational effort by political entrepreneurs who work towards mobilizing disaffected youth
around racist and nationalist agendas. This falls under the category of social mobilization
studied by people such as But here I'm more interested here in the process of socialization at
the individual level that leads to the phenomenon of disaffection. (Several earlier posts have
addressed the mobilization part of the story
There would appear to be a clear anxiety among those in positions of power and
responsibility within society about the problematic behaviour of some individuals, as well as
the need to maintain social inclusion and reduce social exclusion (Tait, 2000; Long &
Sanderson, 2001). Central to this, particularly (although not exclusively) in relation to young
people, is the issue of tackling disaffection. However, there are considerable difficulties in
defining disaffection because researchers have employed numerous terms to define a cluster of
behaviours, attitudes and experiences that could be covered by this overarching term. 'The
variety of ways in which disaffection can be expressed suggests what has been borne out by
research into the issue: namely that disaffection is the outcome of a multiplicity of causes, often
interrelated, but differing from case to case. Despite being given a common label, it is
important to remember therefore that disaffected young people are not all a homogeneous
group. Other researchers have also pointed to the complex, multi-causal, and often highly
individualised nature of disaffection, and have highlighted the need not only to take account of
diverse behaviours and attitudes but also the varying levels at which they are exhibited.
Heathcote-Elliott and Walters (2000),
It has also been noted that 'despite the lack of consensus in definition, one feature common to
all reports on the subject is that being labelled disaffected has negative connotations for the
individual' (Heathcote-Elliott & Walters, 2000 p.1). It could be argued that the terminology
used to describe disaffected young people is perhaps of little importance in relation to
addressing the disaffection itself, but the frequency with which authors have highlighted the
potential dangers of labelling young people in such a way indicates that this issue of semantics
is far from insignificant (Shields & Bredemeier, 1995; Pitt & Andrews, 1997; Goodman, 1999;
Halas, 2002). This has led to calls suggesting that practitioners and policy makers should make
a distinction between 'defining' and 'describing' young people, and warnings that although
using the label 'disaffected' may help to identify a problem 'it should not blind us to the
complexity of the causes that lie behind it' (Steer, 2002 p.2). Moreover, Miller et al (1997)
have argued that adults working with young people need to accept, understand and allow for
the multi-dimensional lives of young people, and the stigmatising influence that labels such as
'at-risk' or 'deviant' can have on them.
Conclusion
Drawing on the interview material, it appeared that, despite being well adapted to the system of
education, the subjects were rather bored and unchallenged in school. Three groups emerged: a
small number who enjoyed school for academic reasons, the majority who claimed to be
positively oriented to school for nonintellectual reasons, and those who are poorly adapted to
school. Within the limitations of the study, it was found that the sample was generally well
adapted to their surroundings; however, most of them found school boring and they coped with
the boredom in school for non-academic reasons.
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