Student Perceptions in the Classroom

Dale H. Schunk, Judith L. Meece

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781136473579
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book's two primary objectives are to present theory and research on the role of learners' achievement-related perceptions in educational contexts and to discuss the implications of this research for educational practices. Although contributors share the view that students' perceptions exert important effects in achievement settings, they differ in diverse ways including their theoretical orientation, their choice of research methodology, the perceptions they believe are of primary importance, and the antecedents and consequences of these perceptions. They discuss the current status of their ideas and provide a forward look at research and practice.

I

Issues in the Study of
Student Perceptions

1

Theory and Research on
Student Perceptions in the
Classroom

DALE H. SCHUNK
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Researchers studying students’ classroom behaviors are focusing increasingly on the influence of students’ thoughts, beliefs, and feelings about themselves, other persons, and events. This focus on student perceptions assumes that students are active information processors who affect classroom events as much as they are affected by them (Pintrich, Cross, Kozma, & McKeachie, 1986). Current theories of learning and motivation portray students as individuals who formulate achievement goals, selectively attend to events, engage in activities, and employ strategies they believe will help them attain goals, process (organize, transform, code) information in meaningful ways for storage in memory, and create and maintain a positive psychological climate for accomplishing goals (Weinstein & Mayer, 1986).

This view contrasts with earlier, behavioristic views of learners as passive recipients of information whose responses are affected by their reinforcement histories and stimuli in the present environment (Skinner, 1953). As Zimmerman (1989) noted, this view also contrasts with theories postulating that student learning, motivation, and achievement depend heavily on abilities and other individual differences. Although such variables as intelligence and socioeconomic status (SES) may affect students’ academic behaviors, the former do not completely explain the latter. For example, students within any given ability level differ in their motivation, achievement, and ability-related perceptions (Bandura, 1986; Schunk, 1989).

The contributors to this volume diverge in many ways: theoretical perspective, types of perceptions addressed, and methodological considerations (tasks, subjects, procedures). Despite these differences, they share the belief that student perceptions represent complex processes that are influenced by a variety of factors and that have diverse effects in school. In this chapter I initially provide a historical perspective on the role of student perceptions in the disciplines of teaching and instructional processes, learning, and motivation. I then discuss the chapters within an organizational framework comprising four sections: Issues in the Study of Student Perceptions, Social Perceptions, Ability-Related Perceptions, Goal Perceptions. I conclude with suggestions for future research.

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Theory and research in various disciplines have influenced the current emphasis on student perceptions. I have chosen to discuss the contributions from the fields of teaching and instructional processes, learning, and motivation. These domains are relevant to the book’s focus and reveal a similar progression in the importance of student perceptions in educational settings. Space limitations preclude an in-depth review of the contributions from other domains (e.g., counseling and psychotherapy, developmental and social psychology).

Teaching and Instructional Processes

Researchers currently investigate student perceptions to determine their relation to teaching and student behaviors (Brophy & Good, 1986), but historically perceptions received little research attention. A sense of this changing emphasis is evident from examining the three volumes of the Handbook of Research on Teaching edited by Gage (1963), Travers (1973), and Wittrock (1986a). Neither the first nor second handbook includes a chapter exclusively devoted to student perceptions. The first handbook contains a chapter by Stern (1963) on noncognitive variables. Noncognitive is defined as, “measures of individual differences in attitudes, values, interests, appreciations, adjustments, temperament, and personality” (p. 400), although attitude is the primary measure for which research on students is summarized. The second handbook includes a chapter on teaching of affective responses (Khan & Weiss, 1973). Affective is defined as, “the evaluative component of attitudes associated with a feeling core of liking or disliking for social and psychological objects” (p. 760), and the chapter focuses on attitudinal research.

The third handbook (Wittrock, 1986a) contains a chapter on students’ thought processes (Wittrock, 1986b). The first sentence of this chapter highlights the importance of student perceptions:

The recent research on students’ thought processes studies the effects of teachers and instruction upon the student perceptions, expectations, attentional processes, motivations, attributions, memories, generations, understandings, beliefs, attitudes, learning strategies, and metacognitive processes that mediate achievement, (p. 297)

Research is summarized on the influence in classrooms of student perceptions of self-concepts, expectations, teachers and teacher behaviors, instructional processes, cognitive and metacognitive processes, attributions, and learning strategies. This research shows that student perceptions can mediate the relationship of teacher behaviors to student achievement: Teaching can influence student perceptions, which in turn can affect achievement.

One limitation of historical work is that attitudes and other student beliefs were viewed as products of observable actions by teachers and students. Although student beliefs are influenced by classroom events, the chapters in this volume make it clear that student perceptions also affect classroom events. In short, research on teaching historically offered a limited view of the role of student perceptions in the classroom.

In addition to research on attitudes, another historical line of investigation that contributed to the present emphasis on student perceptions is research on self-concept. Self-concept refers to one’s collective self-perceptions that are formed through experiences with, and interpretations of, the environment, and that are heavily influenced by reinforcements and evaluations by significant other persons (Marsh & Shavelson, 1985; Shavelson & Bolus, 1982). Little educational research investigated self-concept prior to 1950, but since then work has accelerated (Wylie, 1961, 1979). Wylie (1961) devoted four pages to educational factors affecting self-concept and the role of self-concept during learning, but her 1979 volume contains 53 pages addressing the relation of self-concept to achievement. Hansford and Hattie (1982) conducted a meta-analysis of 128 studies that investigated self-concept and achievement and that involved over 200,000 subjects.

Current research on teaching and instructional processes explores student perceptions of control, competence, attributions, teachers, peers, and metacognitive (higher-order) processes, among others. Researchers assess student perceptions with oral or written measures, by asking students to recall what they were thinking about at various points during a lesson (possibly after watching videotaped portions of the lesson), and by having them verbalize aloud as they work on academic tasks (think-aloud procedure). A goal of many researchers is to integrate findings from research on teaching with those from the learning literature to formulate a unified model of classroom teaching and learning (Winne, 1985).

Learning

Although the focus was short-lived, perceptions formed an integral part of some early learning research. In 1879 Wundt established a psychological laboratory in Leipzig, Germany. Titchener, a student of Wundt’s, subsequently became the director of the psychological laboratory at Cornell University (Mueller, 1979). The experimental method used by Wundt, Titchener, and many others of the period was introspection, a form of observation involving people’s perceptions. Subjects in experiments reported their immediate experiences following exposure to objects or events (e.g., if shown a table they might verbalize their perceptions of shape, size, color, texture, etc.). They were not to label (say “table”) or report knowledge about it or meanings of their perceptions; these activities implied that subjects were attending to the stimulus rather than to their conscious processes, which defeated introspection’s purpose of studying the structure of mental processes.

Introspection was highly regarded by many psychologists because it helped demarcate psychology from other sciences. Unfortunately, introspection often was problematic and its results unreliable. Forcing people to ignore meanings is an unnatural exercise that provides an inaccurate picture of the mind’s structure (Schunk, 1991). Led by Watson (1914), behaviorists criticized introspection and urged psychologists to study behavior.

Through the work of Thorndike, Guthrie, Hull, Skinner, and others, behaviorism dominated American psychology until the early 1960s. Behaviorists do not deny the existence of mental processes, but they contend that these processes do not explain behavior because the causes of behavior reside primarily in the environment. To change behavior, one should alter environmental cues and consequences of actions.

With the domination of behaviorism, learning researchers did not study perceptions. One exception was Gestalt psychologists (Kohler, 1947/1959). Originally a theory of perception, Gestalt theory viewed learning as the organizing of perceptions into meaningful configurations (Schunk, 1991). As a formal view of learning, Gestalt theory was thought provoking but generated little research and did not develop into a major theory.

Various factors contributed to the decline of behaviorism, but a major cause was that its principles had difficulty explaining research findings involving complex learning. The cognitive conceptions of learning that began to appear in the 1960s stressed that learning involves the acquisition of knowledge and knowledge structures and occurs as a result of information being mentally processed (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968). Although early information-processing research was primarily oriented toward factors related to learning (e.g., knowledge states, memory), interest in learning processes has grown since 1975 (Shuell, 1986).

From an information-processing perspective, student perceptions are types of metacognitive processes. Two types of metacognitive processes are involved in learning (Shuell, 1986). One type helps to regulate activities necessary for learning; examples are planning, organizing information, and monitoring one’s level of understanding. The second type is concerned with what learners do and do not know about the material being learned and the processes involved in learning it. Subsumed under the second type is metacognitive knowledge about persons, tasks, and strategies (Flavell, 1985). The persons category includes knowledge of similarities and differences among persons, as well as knowledge of one’s own skills and beliefs (e.g., “I’m better in math than in English”); the tasks category comprises information about how task demands can influence performance (recognizing information is easier than recalling it); the strategies categories includes knowledge about the potential value of different strategies for successfully completing tasks (rehearsal is a good strategy for memorizing).

Social cognitive theory also stresses the importance of student perceptions during learning with its emphasis on the idea that people often acquire knowledge, rules, skills, strategies, beliefs, and attitudes, by observing others (Bandura, 1986). Individuals learn the functional value and appropriateness of modeled behaviors by observing their consequences, and they act in accordance with their beliefs concerning the expected outcomes of actions.

Two types of student perceptions are outcome expectations and perceived self-efficacy. Outcome expectations are beliefs about anticipated outcomes of actions. People select actions they believe will be successful and attend to models who they think will teach them valued skills. Outcome expectations sustain behaviors over long periods when people believe their actions will eventually produce desired outcomes (Bandura, 1986). Perceived self-efficacy refers to judgments of one’s capabilities to organize and implement actions necessary to attain designated performance levels. Self-efficacy can influence choice of activities, effort expended, and persistence. Although these outcomes typically are associated with motivation, they also affect learning (Schunk, 1989).

Current learning research explores the role of student perceptions in the acquisition, retention, and use of knowledge. A particularly active area of research is concerned with teaching students to use learning strategies, or systematic cognitive plans that assist the acquisition of information and task performance (Borkowski, 1985; Pressley et al., 1990). Researchers are showing that learning is a complex process affected by personal and contextual variables and that students’ perceptions of themselves, teachers, and peers are influential during learning (Pintrich et al., 1986).

Motivation

The role of student perceptions in motivation theory and research has evolved since the early experimental studies of motivation in the 1930s (Weiner, 1990). Early behavioral theories explained motivation in terms of responses elicited by stimuli (classical conditioning), emitted in the presence of stimuli (operant conditioning), or produced by drive and habit strength (systematic behavior theory). In classical conditioning, the motivational properties of an unconditioned stimulus are transmitted to a conditioned stimulus through repeated pairings. This is a passive view of motivation because once conditioning occurs, the conditioned response is elicited by the conditioned stimulus. In fact, conditioning is complex and depends on information conveyed to the individual about the likelihood of the unconditioned stimulus following presentation of the conditioned stimulus (Rescorla, 1972).

In operant conditioning, motivated behavior is an increased rate of responding or a greater likelihood that a response will be made contingent on a stimulus (Skinner, 1953). Motivated behavior is a function of the individual’s reinforcement history and cues presently in the environment. According to systematic behavior theory (Hull, 1943), needs produce drives that energize individuals. Responding that results in reinforcement creates a habit, and habit strength increases with reinforced stimulus-response pairings. Learning represents increased habit strength; motivation is, “the initiation of learned, or habitual, patterns of movement or behavior” (Hull, 1943, p. 226).

Various lines of evidence caused difficulty for these views, but especially important was research on reinforcement. Tolman and Honzik (1930) demonstrated the phenomenon of latent learning (learning in the absence of reinforcement), which contradicted the notion that behavior change occurs only through reinforcement. Some time later, Bandura (1969) showed that much learning occurs through observation in the absence of reinforcement and performance by observers. Although there is ample evidence that reinforcers can influence what people do, it is not reinforcement that affects behavior but rather people’s beliefs about reinforcement. People engage in activities when they believe they will be reinforced and they value that reinforcement (Bandura, 1986). When reinforcement history conflicts with beliefs, people act based on their beliefs (Brewer, 1974). In short, behavioral views offer incomplete accounts of motivation because they ignore the influence of cognitive processes.

Important early cognitive perspectives on motivation emerged from work by Lewin, Dembo, Festinger, and Sears (1944) on level of aspiration (the goal one is attempting to attain), and by Atkinson (1957) on achievement motivation (the striving to perform difficult tasks as well as possible). Atk...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Part I: Issues in the Study of Student Perceptions
• Part II: Social Perceptions
• Part III: Ability-Related Perceptions
• Part IV: Goal Perceptions
• Author Index
• Subject Index