Understanding the Impact of Fear Appeals and Professional Development on Student Achievement

1. Quantitative approaches to analysis Dr Dave Putwain Social and Psychological Sciences Dr Laura McMeeking CLIS

2. Quantitative analysis: an example • Social- Psychological factors which influence learning and achievement: • Motivation • Emotions (esp. anxiety) • Competence beliefs • Classroom environment • Prior research suggests that students can interpret achievement-based messages in different ways

3. My research questions… • Students in KS4 have reported that they can find fear appeals very anxiety-provoking: • What effect are teachers’ fear appeals having on students motivation? • What effect are teachers’ fear appeals having on students fear of failure? • Are they actually having any effect on GCSE performance?

4. My theoretical model… Fear of Failure GCSE Attainment Perceived fear appals Motivation

5. My analytic frame… • Structural equation modelling (SEM): is a test of whether the theoretical model provides a good fit to the empirical data • Multiple fit indices are used to assess model fit: • χ2 / df • RMSEA • CFI / TLI/ NFI/ IFI

6. The analysis… χ2 (310) = 569.15, p<.001, χ2/df = 1.84, CFI = .91, RMSEA = .05

7. My conclusion… • Fear appeals have competing effects, some positive and some negative: • A positive effect on GCSE maths performance by motivating students • A negative effect by increase by increasing fear of failure • When perceived by students as threatening only has a negative outcome

8. Quantitative analysis: Another example • The effects of a professional development (PD) program on student achievement • Content based maths/science PD for middle level (US grades 5 to 8) teachers • Given over 5 years with no particular pattern of enrollment in courses • Aimed at increasing teacher content knowledge

9. The theoretical model…

10. The research questions… • Is the PD programme effective in raising student achievement? • Are there differential effects for different groups of students? • Does more participation on the part of the teacher lead to greater effects on raising student achievement?

11. The analysis… • Chose the cohort control design for analysing two different groups • Students who had teachers before they began participation in the PD (comparison group) • Students who had teachers after they completed the PD (treatment group) • Went through several iterations of the design before settling on the final design (after consulting a statistician!)

12. The results… • The effects are mixed, and can only be limited to the sample of teachers/students in our study • Students of teachers who took two or more PD courses were anywhere from a 37% to 178% more likely to raise their proficiency level on the state test than students of teachers with no courses • However, teacher sample size was very small

13. What this brings us to… • What couldn’t we measure with the analysis method we used? • Is a state test the best way of measuring student achievement? • Could we have gotten a more well-rounded dataset by interviewing students about their experiences with participant teachers?

14. Conclusions… • Content based PD can be effective in raising student achievement but is very difficult to measure • Using quantitative and qualitative analyses in tandem can give richer, more interesting results • Choosing research questions first, then choosing the analysis design that best suits the question is the best way to do research