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).

.

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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