The Tardiness in High School Classrooms - Case Study Example

Review of the Research A study involving contingency contracting to reduce tardiness was conducted by Feng Din, Lori Isack and Jill Reitveld. The research, published in 2003, was entitled Effects of Contingency Contracting on Decreasing Student Tardiness and presented to the Annual Conference of the Eastern Educational Research Association. Analysis of this research will form the basis of this paper. The hypothesis, research methods and results shall be presented and discussed in the hope of gaining knowledge on educational intervention best practices and best practices in conducting research. a. Topic of the Study The researchers expressly stated that the purpose of the study is to determine the effects of contingency contracting in addressing tardiness in high school classrooms. Commendable was the definition of the term ‘tardiness’ as the coming to class late and not coming to school late. They believe that this method should be able to decrease the propensity of high school students in being late for their classes precisely because it provides a setting where the student is motivated to act as such due to beneficial and appealing returns. Contingency contracting is defined as the agreement made between a teacher and the student wherein the latter shall receive rewards after the successful completion of behavioral and academic goals. This type of behavior modification actually requires a contract to be drafted expressly stating the terms of the agreement and the reinforcers upon the stated time of completion. Based on the research conducted by the authors, Contingency contracting is well-established tool used by many educators because of the many beneficial aspects that it contains. More of an awards-based intervention, Contingency contracting is firmly based in psychological theories and is favored by many educators because promotes a cooperative teacher-student relationship rather than an authoritarian arrangement. The method has also been proven to be effective in other fields such as in medicine where it was tested for weight control by Jones and Jensen (1975), for smoking by Spring et al (1978) and for drug abuse by several researchers. It is also being used by school administrators to improve teacher performance. b, Methodology Selection of Participants The study involved 32 participants from Grade 9-12 classes coming from high schools in Chicago and belonging to 5 science and 3 English classes. The sample was composed of 10 African American females, 8 African American males, 6 Caucasian females, 7 Caucasian males and 1 Hispanic male. The annual income bracket to which they belonged was from $14,000 to $30,000. Two Caucasian female teachers participated for the study. One taught in Science while the other one taught in English and both had 2 years experience. Random sampling was conducted in assigning who will be in the control group and the experimental group. The groups had 16 participants each. Those belonging in the control group were not informed that they were involved. It is not known whether the authors were concerned in providing a fairly distributed sample based on social and demographic backgrounds. Professional researchers find it necessary to investigate whether there are prominent and significant differences in demographic backgrounds of participants primarily because it can lead to the nullification of results. For example, one participant could be a working student. Consequently, the values provided by this participant will be significantly different from the other. The goal in research is to have a sample that is fairly representative of the population and have no significant differences. Statistical tests for variance are used to establish values that will show whether there are significant differences. The authors had participants coming from different racial and gender categories that brings a semblance of a fair representation. Nonetheless, further reading would reveal that participants were chosen not by the authors but by teachers themselves who based their decisions on attendance. 4 students were chosen from each of the classes. In effect, the profile of the participants was not the consequence of a statistical procedure. However, this limitation should not be construed as the fault of the researchers because other factors such as limited time, area of operations, accessibility and funding often do come into play. Nonetheless, it would have been better if they had conducted a statistical analysis on differences. Contingency Contract The agreement made between the teachers and the experimental group was that the participant will be rewarded with a small candy every time they came to class on time. In addition, they would receive a bigger candy if they completed the week without any tardiness. Participation in the study would be confidential and any breach of this arrangement would result to the nullification of the study. First in the list of question regarding the contingency contract is the choice of candies as the reward for the accomplishment of objective. What is the basis of choosing this reward? Is this appropriate and appealing to high school students? The authors left this question unanswered. They did, however, mention the names of the candies that served as a reward thus bringing us to our second question: ‘Why did they choose these brands?’. Again, they did not specify the reason why they chose the brands. It would have been better had they provided a list of rewards and let the participants decide which one would motivate them to come to class early. What if the student was health conscious and did not like chocolates? Design of the Study There was one significant topic that was left out in the study and this was the investigation of the reasons why the students were tardy. Did they have legitimate reasons for always being late or were they just too lazy to come to class early. Are they involved in a certain recurring activity or were they not interested in the subject or in the teacher? The authors did not consider these reasons which were very important as it can change the outcome of the results. We must also put into question the confidentiality of the research project. There is no assurance that the participants did not divulge any information regarding the research which could effectively influence the behavior not only of themselves but of their peers. Friends and classmates could either offer support for them to come early or could dissuade them from providing reliable results. There is just no assurance of confidentiality and control of the outcomes. There was no mechanism to address if ever there was indeed a breach of confidentiality and the control group came to know of the experiment. The study would have had to stop. There might also be privacy issues once a person in the control group came to know that he/she was part of an experiment. Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was also used in the statistical analysis of results but there were no discussion on the merits of this procedure. It would have been more complete if this was included. The authors recognized the ease and simplicity of the research design that they used (in p.10). We also lend credit to them for providing a simplistic tool for high school teachers to improve their student’s performance. However, it could have been better if they provided a more intensive research on the merits of their research design to be able to pass scrutiny. Description of Conducting the Research Report The first challenge in the activity was finding an academic research conducted by educational professionals and published by a credible institution. This became problematic as there was a minimal amount of literature available. A search in the school and public library was conducted to determine whether they had records of research projects that were concerned with student tardiness and addressing them. Records were searched in computerized databases and sections for education were scanned. However, there was a limited amount of information that can be used for the research project essay. After the library search did not provide any tangible results, the Internet was accessed. There was a need to use variations of key terms in conducting a search in Google. Terms like ‘school tardiness research’, ‘tardy student research’, ‘study of chronic lateness of students’ and ‘study of tardy students’. The search engine returned many websites and the most relevant was visited. However, the problem was that many of the sites did not contain any academic and published research. The internet is notorious for its misleading content. Nonetheless, hours of internet searching and counterchecking led me to the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) website where credible information and researches were freely available. In the ERIC website, I searched for the key terms ‘student tardiness’. It returned a list of researches where I choose from. There were limitations, however, as some of the research were not available online. The search was continued and I came upon one research that caught my eye. The study was entitled School Dropouts, Tardiness and Absenteeism by Ediger Marlow. However, the discussion was broad and not specific to tardiness. Next was the work of Barbara Lee Weade entitled School and Work Tardiness in High School Students in Rural Wisconsin but this only specific to working students I continued the search and finally found the research that I have discussed above. The next challenge was the approach I was going to take in presenting and analyzing the research. Would I conduct a simple description of the research or should I take a more critical stand and analyze it for its strengths and weaknesses? I originally intended for the first choice because I considered myself not in a position to criticize a paper presented and accepted in a credible association. However, my education and training enabled me to discern the fact that there were too many details that were left out. Thus, I opted to assume the second method for presenting the paper. Discussion of Results After conducting the ANCOVA, it was found that the experimental group had a post-experiment mean tardiness of 11.37 from a pre-experiment value of 27.12.The study was repeated 8 times in 8 different small groups with the same significant reduction in tardiness times. The control group did register a significant reduction from a pre-experiment value of 26.88 to a post-value of 21.33 but the contingency contract proves to result to greater reduction. The experiment was repeated 8 times for 8 different small groups. The results of the other experiments also indicated that contingency contracting greatly reduced the tardiness times. The research is commendable because of its simplicity and practicality but a more thorough academic investigation is called for. To be more comprehensive but concise, ensuing studies should be based on a solid statistical foundation. It should also be longitudinal as we cannot expect students to be always inspired by candies and other rewards. Nonetheless, the discussion, analysis and presentation of the study provided me a good idea on how to conduct a good research. References: Weade, Barbara (2004). School and Work Tardiness in High School Students in Rural Wisconsin. University of Wisconsin Graduate Research Project. Curwin, R.L., & Mendler, A.M. (1988). Discipline with dignity. Alexandria, VA: Association for Behavioral Modification. Din, F., Isack, L. and Rietveld, J. (2003). Effects of Contingency Contracting on Decreasing Student Tardiness. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Eastern Island Educational Research Association Feb-March 2003. Ediger, Marlow (und). School Dropouts, Absenteeism and Tardiness. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED279941. Jones, D. and Jensen, C. (1975). The use of deviation line in contingency contracting for weight control. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED137632. Spring, F., Sipich, J., Trimble, W. & Goeckner,D. (1978). Effects of Contingency and Non- Contingency Contracts in the Context of Self-Control-Oriented Smoking Modification program. Behavior Therapy, 9(5): 967-968. Read More