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