What’s Good Teaching If Students Don’t Feel in Control?

December 9th, 2009 By: Maryellen Weimer, Ph.D. in Articles, Teachers' Corner

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the higher education newsletter, The Teaching Professor, which Maryellen Weimer, Ph.D., edits. Although the article is originally for an audience of college professors, the information is valuable for all classrooms. I also think it’s heartening for the secondary school educator to know that those in higher ed. share some of the same challenges that we do. Reprinted with permission.

For 10 years Raymond Perry, a psychologist at the University of Manitoba, has been studying the relationship between attributes students bring to class and the quality of instruction they receive there. His studies unite two important lines of research, heretofore considered unrelated.

During the time they spend at our institutions, students face a variety of personal and societal pressures. There are also academic pressures, of course: They must write papers, work in groups, make presentations, and take exams. Their ability to meet these challenges successfully depends on certain attributes they bring to class.

Particularly important are their notions of “perceived control” – the extent to which they believe they can predict and influence events in their environment. If students feel a “loss of control” – feel that no matter how much they study, how hard they try, they still won’t succeed – that feeling affects their performance.

Students bring varying levels of perceived control to the classroom, where they experience different degrees of effective instruction. Related research has documented certain aspects of teaching that have been shown to have an impact on student learning, such as teacher expressiveness, for example. Perry (in collaboration with various colleagues across the years) explores how student perceptions of perceived control and instructional effectiveness, in this case defined in terms of instructor expressiveness, relate.

Students most in need benefit least

His work, most of which has occurred in laboratory settings, began by establishing the nature of the relationship. Said simply, this research shows that “students lacking control over academic performance are incapable of benefiting from good instruction.” Perry and Penner point out the irony of this initial finding: “The students who are in most need of effective teaching are least likely to gain from it.” (p. 262)

How Perry documented this conclusion is rather interesting. Students in the study began by taking an aptitude test that temporarily altered their perceptions of control. Students in one group were given “contingent feedback,” which contributed to their feeling of mastery of the situation, while students in a second group got “non-contingent feedback,” which added to feelings of helplessness. After the test, half the students in each feedback group were shown a 25-minute video tape presented by an inexpressive instructor and the other half a tape of the same length by an expressive instructor.

Everyone took an achievement test afterward. Students who received the contingent feedback and listened to the expressive instructor felt more control over that posttest and actually performed better than students in the same group who listened to the inexpressive instructor. On the other hand, students who received the non-contingent feedback experienced a temporary loss of control and did not perform well even with the expressive instructor. These results were replicated in three follow-up studies.

Student feelings of loss of control are to some degree situational. They occur periodically. Unannounced pop quizzes, excessive amounts of material covered too quickly, content not organized coherently – all can make students feel as though their success or failure in a class is to some degree beyond their control. However, other psychological research has documented that perceptions of control are “stable cognitive schemata.” They are relatively enduring.

Internal-locus vs. external-locus

In more recent work, Perry and colleagues have explored the impact of expressive and inexpressive teachers on two groups of students, known in the literature as internal-locus (those believing they have control over events) and external-locus (those believing events beyond them are in control). Their findings were consistent with earlier results. Internal-locus students performed better for the expressive instructor than for the inexpressive one. The conclusion: “Whether loss of control is considered in terms of temporary (state) or enduring (trait) qualities, it consistently impedes the benefits of effective instruction.” (p. 263)

More recently Perry has explored what happens when internal-locus students experience a temporary loss of control. They study hard for an exam, believe they’ve done what they need to do well, but end up with a low score. The results are somewhat surprising. Even when internal-locus students suffer a temporary loss of control, they still benefit from expressive instruction. They seem able to “buffer” themselves against the loss of control. Their psychological makeup somehow empowers them to intensify efforts to regain control, so when they experience effective instruction they’re able to reap the benefits.

This work raises many intriguing questions about the role of instructors in the success of college students. For at-risk students, who are often not very empowered learners, the quality of instruction may not be as significant to their learning as the interactions and experiences they have in their classrooms. Research like this should give us pause as we continue to explore how best to facilitate the learning of all students.

References:
Raymond Perry and Kurt Penner. Enhancing academic achievement in college students through attributional retraining and instruction. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82:2 (1990), 262-271.

Raymond Perry. Perceived control in college students: Implications for instruction in higher education in John C. Smart, ed., Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research, vol. 7 (New York: Agathon Press, 1991), 1-56.

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Tags: achievement, control, motivation