Personal and social factors associated with success and failure in open and conventional schools

Abstract

The study investigated the correlation between attendance at a conventional school or an open school and the academic achievement and personality of pupils in schools in the Hutt Valley. The Progressive Achievement Tests of Reading Comprehension, Reading Vocabulary, Listening Comprehension and Mathematics were administered, in addition to the Children's Personality Questionnaire, the Internal Academic Responsibility Scale, the Piers-Harris Children's Self-concept Scale and the Self-concept as a Learner Scale. Subjects in the main sample were 57 boys and 40 girls of mean age 10 Years, 5 months, attending conventional schools, and 39 boys and and 39 girls, of mean age 10 years, 4 months, attending open-plan schools. Analysis of covariance, controlling for differences in intelligence between the groups, showed the mathematics achievement of conventional pupils to be significantly, but not substantially, higher than that of pupils from open schools. The Children's Personality Questionnaire yielded significant differences on Factors F and G, and on the second order factors of Tough Poise and Independence. No other achievement of personality differences were significant. Further analysis of covariance, including the variables of pupils' sex, position in the family, socio-economic status, family type and size in separate analyses, also failed to yield evidence of significant differences in attainment or personality according to educational placement. Consistent patterns of sex differences in attainment and personality across placements were found, however, with girls showing significantly higher attainment in Reading Comprehension and Reading Vocabulary and different responses on some factors of the Children's Personality Questionnaire, the Self-concept as a Learner Scale and on some sub-scores of the Children's Self-concept Scale. Socio-economic status, family type and size, and position in family also yielded some significant differences across settings. In addition to this main sample, a preliminary survey of Standard 4 children identified as having special characteristics and attending the two different types of school was undertaken. The groups included gifted and slow-learning children, Maoris, Samoans and other polynesians, aggressive-disruptive and withdrawn-inhibited children. Mean ages of these pupils ranged from 10 years, 3 months to 10 years 8 months. Apart from the group of Maori subjects, all these groups were too small for statistical analysis of the data. There did appear to be a trend for gifted and Samoan children to show higher achievement when attending the conventional schools, and for all children to show higher mathematics in the conventional settings. Children in these groups differed in attainment and some personality variables from children in the main sample, but attendance at a conventional school as opposed to an open school did not appear to differentiate between subjects in any consistent way. Statistical analysis, by t test, of the data for Maori children, also failed to yield any significant differences between Maori children attending the different types of schools.