Student Achievement and Factors Affecting Learning Style.

30 can be measured by numbers or alphabets, this study stops the result on the numbers not moving on to good deal or change behavior. Factors Affecting Students Achievement Students achievement is not a simply matter of what had happened at school, although school can make a significant difference research that give numerous factors for students successful, but this is not easy to implement to any school. The learning achievement can be categorized as one changing in behavior, Zyngier 42 gives comments that students will increase in engagement when they feel easier to learn and that make them want to be attentive in the class, he also added that they also want to expressed their idea that they felt the teachers could use to make the lesson more rewarding. While Hooks 43 added that few teachers present conflict in order to live the situation as potential transformative engagement. It is not necessarily negative but rather to determine how we cope with that conflict. While in other resources, it has been told from long time period some discussions about factors affecting students achievement. In 1966, a famous finding by James Coleman found that background characteristic such as race, parental achievement levels, and family income swamped most other factors studied as determinants of students test scores. A 1999 paper estimating that 60 percent of variation in student achievement was attributable to such background characteristics. 44 Researches have been unable to link significant share of the variation in student achievement – as much as 25 percent - to any particular input. Of the remaining share, attributable to what 42 Zynger, David. Journal Teacher and Teaching; Listening to Teachers – Listening to Students; Substantive Conversation about Resistance, Empowerment and Engangement. Vol.13, No 4. August 2006, p. 32. 43 Hooks, B. Teaching Community: a Pedagogy of Hope New York: Routledge, 2003, p. 167. 44 Goldhaber et al, Teacher Licencing and Student Achievement in C. Finn and M. Kanstorom eds. Better Teachers, Better School. Washington DC: Thomas B. Fordham Institute, 2012. 31 happens in school, researches have link most of that variation is the teacher. Furthermore, it is difficult to site an extract figure on what percent of the variation in achievement observed is attributable to differences in teacher effectiveness, 3 economist in 1998 estimated that at least 7.5 percent of variation in student achievement resulted directly from teacher quality and it added that the actual number could be as high as 20 percent. 45 Researchers found that school-based factors, including teaching are more influential in Math than Reading. A 1999 paper stated that put all in school factors, including school, teacher, class-level factor at approximately 21 percent of the variation in 10 th grade mathematics achievement – it’s further estimated that 8.5 percent was directly due to teacher effectiveness. 46 Some researchers warn that other important factor that potentially affect achievement – such as the effect of principals and other administrators, and the interaction of teachers with the curriculum have not been as carefully studied as teacher quality. 47 It can be said that variation in student achievement is predominantly a product of individual and family background characteristic. Of the school factors that have been isolated for study, teachers are probably the most important determinant of how students will perform on standardized test. In a paper of WEAC Winconsin Education Association Coucil it stated factors affecting student achievement are 4 factors, they are: school, family and individual, social incentives and Socio economic conditions. First, school variable included are S tudent’s tracking which means tracking the students based on their ability, as the result many students tracking in ―slow track‖ this action is forbidden since there will be a bad impression of low ability student, this action will not give benefit for students or teacher, otherwise it will give hamper for 45 Hanushek, et al Teachers, Schools, and Academic Achievement. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper no. 6691New York: 1998, p. 180. 46 Ibid. 47 Rothstein, J., Teacher Quality in Educational Production: Tracking, Decay, and Student Achievement. Quarterly Journal of Economics 2010, pp. 175 — 214. 32 student. After that Retention is also not help for students to grow their ability. However, some researches show that the assumption of retention is helpful for immature student is not valid. In fact, students who are retained one grade level have only one chance in fifty of graduating from high school, those who are retained twice virtually no chance of graduating. It is also interesting to note that in Japan and UK the retention rate for students in the primary grades is zero, while in Europe and the Soviet Union the median retention is two percent. Class Size, in recent years, there have been several research studies which show that reduced class can improve student achievement. School Size, small school strategy may be powerful school improvement model, the effective size for an elementary school is in the range of 300-400. Best Practice, There are some misconceptions to understand the instructional practices to improve student learning. Standardized Achievements Test, critics on this term is that it has negative effect an academic achievement. Gender differences, the issues is lies between men and woman to choose their career after their graduation from school. Expectations, The expectations of teachers, parents, and students themselves have a significant effect on achievement levels. Writing, research shows that discussing, reading, writing about text can help students understand it. 48 There are various kinds of factors affecting students’ achievement. Some of the researchers stated that environment of the students, while others parents’ attention could be the factors to raise students’ achievement, another experts stated that economy or family background is become crucial factors for students. School is also factors to raise students achievement which teacher, headmaster, school administrator, policy, retention, class size, school size, curriculum are factors from it. The writer concludes that all factors come from students’ surrounding whether from parents, school, or background. Therefore the writer take parents as one factor to be searched in this study, in this 48 WEAC Winconsin Education Association Council, Education Issues: Variables Affecting Student Achievement. 33 case parents’ attention become one major factor in conducting this study. E. Theoretical Framework The aim of this study is to find out the relationship among visual learning style and parents attention toward English language achievement, therefore this research is a correlational study, which is belong to quantitative research. While a survey design provides a quantitative or numerical description of trends, attitude, or opinions of a population by studying a sample of that population. 49 Muijs explained that a survey research is quite flexible and can appear in variety of forms, it is characterized by the collection of data using standard questionnaire forms. 50 Students are interesting as individual, they have different characteristics, they also have different interest, they have different background, and they have different way in accepting a lesson, these differences make them naturally interesting. Parents are the nearest environment with student. They are responsible to their children, they must actively participate in both academic life and daily life, because less attention will affect negatively on their academic. Therefore by increasing parents attention on student’s life will stimulate them to increase their motivation also encourage independence of children in sociality. Parents are important factor that influence students in the school performance, for example the way parents take care their children will give impact to the way they study at school, it also give influence to student’s achievement in learning, furthermore that leads children to encourage the independence and get better achievement in learning. Students and parents are two teams that should working together to reach the same goals, parents should understand what are students’ needs for learning, in this case parents must give attention to the children such as asking their home work, asking what problem they 49 Creswell, W. J. Research Design:Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches. 2 nd edCalifornia: Sage Publication, 2002, p. 235. 50 Muijs, Daniel Doing Quantitative Research in Education with SPSS, London: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2004, p. 34. 34 faced in learning, asking their assignment at school, asking to prepare their tools for school etc. This sharing moment is very crucial for students to facilitate their needs, to have better result parents can cooperate with school to cover their children need in learning, parents should discuss with teacher about how to help student to study at home, parents also could get involve in school program to strengthen their learning. To have clear description about this research design, here is the illustration: C1 C3 C2 Notes: C1= correlation 1 C2= correlation 2 C3= correlation 3 There are 3 correlations conducted on this research. First, correlation grips between visual learning style and English achievement. Second, the correlation detains between parents’ attention and English achievement. Third, the correlation clutch among visual learning style and parents’ attention toward English achievement. The schools were selected based on their accreditation and by the assumption that they shared similar features with many other public elementary school, Such as the condition from the students; their economic live usually from middle-bottom economy, and their characteristic. The other reason for choosing this region is because the writer has the access to conduct the research, thus data can be gathered easily. Visual learning style X1 English Achievement Parents’ attention X2 35

F. Relevant Research

A thesis was conducted to The College of Arts and Science of Ohio University, the title is The Relation between Parent Involvement and Student Academic Achievement: Parent, Teacher, and Child Perspectives. It was conducted on June 2011 by Margaret A. Mahoney. The thesis discussed about parent, teacher and child perspective on parent involvement. This involvement includes 3 domain areas; a parental educational expectations parent’s expectation regarding their child’s school performance and future academic aspiration, b home involvement helping with child’s studies, participating in extracurricular academic activities, reading with a child, and providing homework structure, c School contact and participation attending school activities, contacting the school or child’s teacher, and volunteering at school. Meanwhile, the academic achievement was assessed from GPA Grade Point Average. This thesis is similarly the same with this the writer’s thesis study in term of parents involvement parents attention and student achievement, the difference is in visual learning style. In parents attention, the writer’ thesis discusses about Epstein’s theory and use her theory for the questionnaire too, while in Mahoney’s thesis, she collected many resources to make her questionnaire. Meanwhile in student achievement, the writer’s thesis takes the result from test, Mahoney take it from GPA. The most different between Mahoney thesis and this thesis is the student’ learning style become one of aspect observed. Other relevant research was also conducted by Maubach and Morgan. They conducted a research by the title ―the relationship between gender and learning styles amongst A level modern languages students‖ this article is to find out about possible link between gender and learning style, it explains about conventional wisdom, it start from that biological difference between male and female brain play important role in the development of cognitive skills. It stated that the biological evidence for that issue is mo re to ―scant and inclusive‖ the evidence given is not enough, for instance the Pritchard conduct a research to see a difference attitudes between male and female preferences toward German and French, the result is male prefer to 36 choose German linking to to pics concern to male ―things‖ such as war, industry, cars, while female student choose French because it apparently following a female interest such cuisine, fashion and perfume, those result seems insufficient to proof the poor recruitment of pure linguistic 51 . The result from that research found that there is no relationship between gender and learning style, despite of some finding such as a male willingness to take risk, also to speak spontaneously in foreign language, and greater self confident about asking question of the teacher to help their own understanding, while female student has great interest in reading also presenting well-organised written work. Different from other studies, this study is to sharpen the previous study, since the two items on the study which are Visual Learning Style and Parents Attention are the new subject to correlate, it differ from previous study that correlate gender and learning style, or parent involvement and student academic achievement. 51 Maubach and Carol, The relationship between Gender and Learning Style amongst A level Modern Language Students. Language Learning Journal,University of Batch:2011, pp. 41 —46. 37

CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

A. Research Design

The aim of this study is to find out the relationship among visual learning sty le and parents’ attention to English language achievement, therefore this research is a correlational study, which belongs to quantitative research and a survey design. On the research there are three correlations tested. First, correlation grips between visual learning style and English achievement. Second, the correlation detains between parents’ attention and English achievement. Third, the correlation clutch between visual learning style and parents’ attention with English achievement. To have clear description about this research design, here is the illustration: C1 C3 Notes: C2 C1= correlation 1 C2= correlation 2 C3= correlation 3

B. Data Collection

The datacollected in this study are: a. Questionnaire The questionnaires was administered for students grade five, it is to gather information about the students data in their learning style and their opinion about their parents attention. The questionnaire is Visual learning style X1 English Achievement Parents’ attention X2