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Essay Quiz
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1

You are a teacher and have identified one of your students as a classic underachiever. The student’s parents have requested a meeting with you to discuss the situation. Your task is to determine whether this student’s underachievement is anxiety based or if it is socially based. Socially based underachievement might be due to students who want to “fit in” by not showing their true level of intellectual capacity. Such students may use techniques known as “self-handicapping” as a way of self-protection. Based on what you’ve learned, what will you share with these parents to assist them in supporting their child to reach his/her potential? How can you assess the reasons underlying the student’s underachievement?
2

How might educators use awareness of a students’ style of motivation (i.e., intrinsic versus extrinsic) in order to encourage their best achievement? Also, how might educational programs take into account students’ beliefs about intelligence with respect to it being either “fixed” or “malleable?” For example, a student who believes that intelligence is fixed will be motivated primarily to earn to best possible grade. In contrast, the student who believes intelligence is malleable is more likely to be motivated to actually learn and master the material. In your opinion, do schools by their very structure and nature encourage an overemphasis on “performance” as opposed to actual “learning?”
3

Research on attributional styles suggests that the causes adolescents attach to success and failure have an effect on their degree of effort on subsequent evaluative situations. For example, a student who attributes her success to internal factors such as effort and ability is more likely to work hard on subsequent tasks, whereas a student who attributes her success to external factors such as luck and task difficulty will not necessarily be encouraged to maintain the same degree of effort on subsequent tasks. How can attributional style be incorporated in the classroom such that teachers become aware of its importance? What can teachers do to encourage healthier attributional styles?
4

American youth score as low as the top 30 in international math proficiency tests and as low as the top 20 in international science proficiency tests, despite having educational funding that ranks among the world’s highest. Up to one-third of entering college freshmen now require remedial coursework so that they are able to perform college level work. To what can these dismal results be attributed? What must be happening in the educational systems of Singapore, Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong that America’s educational system is failing to do?
5

An interesting finding is that foreign-born adolescents as well as those who are children of immigrants tend to achieve more in school than do minority youngsters who are 2nd or 3rd generation Americans. This suggests that there are not only differences in educational achievement between groups, but there are also differences “within” cultural and ethnic groups. How can this finding be explained? Since the explanation cannot be attributed to the racial and/or ethnic differences themselves, what alternative explanation can be used to account for this unusual finding?





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