Edited by: Marybeth Gasman, University of Pennsylvania, United States
Reviewed by: Jackie M. Blount, The Ohio State University, United States; Christopher B. Newman, University of San Diego, United States
This article was submitted to Leadership in Education, a section of the journal Frontiers in Education
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
In an era when education is supposed to be a means for good jobs and linked to extrinsic values such as fame and money, students are losing interest in school education. The goal of this research is to see if there is any correlation between the students' views of school worthiness and schoolwork, and demographic variables. Our hypothesis is that several key demographics involving diversity, income, and education will affect how students view school and its importance. Results show that there is no correlation between the demographic variables we analyzed and the student perception of school worthiness.
iGen is the generation of citizens born in the era of the Internet. iGen'rs are born in the technology age with large amounts of information available at their fingertips and through touch screens (Twenge,
Demographic variables have been shown in research to have a strong correlation with student success (VanderStel,
Despite the plethora of literature on finding the correlation between demographic variables and student success, no data exists relating the relationship between any of the demographic variables and student perception of school worthiness, particularly for the students belonging to iGen. School worthiness is defined as the importance of school in the lives of students in preparing them academically. The goal of this research project is to evaluate the students' perception of school worthiness across middle and high school grades and investigate if there is any correlation between demographic variables and student perception of school. We test the hypothesis that if the students are enrolled in school from counties with low median household incomes, low level of parent education, and a higher percentage of racial diversity, then their positive perception of school worthiness will be lower.
Retrospective published data was used in this study. The Pennsylvania Youth Survey (PAYS) data files for the years 2013 and 2015 were downloaded for each of the participating counties from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency website (
The Pennsylvania Youth Survey (PAYS) is an anonymous, voluntary and confidential student survey administered in odd-numbered years to youth in 6, 8, 10, and 12th grades in participating schools throughout the state. The self-reporting survey includes questions related to attitudes, knowledge, behaviors, and experiences. PAYS is administered to both public and private schools across the state. Executive summary reports from the state suggests that in 2011, 16,899 valid responses were analyzed for the report (Pennsylvania Youth Survey Report,
As shown in Table
Table showing the minimum, maximum, and mean values with standard deviation, for each of the questions in the PAYS survey and each grade for the state of Pennsylvania as a whole.
Feel school is important for their later life | 39.9 | 27.3 | 24.5 | 21.0 | 87.1 | 75.4 | 58.7 | 55.0 | 63.8 | 51.2 | 41.1 | 36.8 | 9.4 | 8.2 | 6.6 | 6.1 |
Feel assigned schoolwork is meaningful and important | 32.2 | 20.6 | 15.2 | 11.9 | 70.0 | 50.8 | 37.0 | 35.0 | 50.3 | 35.9 | 26.0 | 21.8 | 7.2 | 5.8 | 4.1 | 4.0 |
Table
Correlation matrix showing correlation coefficient between the questions selected in PAYS survey and demographic variables.
White alone, percent, July 1, 2016, (V2016) | 0.03 | 0.09 | 0.05 | 0.06 | 0.11 | 0.20 | 0.09 | 0.08 |
Black or African American alone, percent, July 1, 2016, (V2016) | −0.05 | −0.12 | −0.06 | −0.08 | −0.11 | −0.19 | −0.10 | −0.07 |
American Indian and Alaska Native alone, percent, July 1, 2016, (V2016) | 0.00 | −0.05 | −0.09 | −0.08 | −0.09 | −0.16 | 0.08 | 0.12 |
Asian alone, percent, July 1, 2016, (V2016) | 0.01 | 0.01 | −0.01 | 0.00 | −0.08 | −0.15 | −0.05 | −0.10 |
Two or More Races, percent, July 1, 2016, (V2016) | 0.02 | −0.05 | −0.04 | −0.05 | −0.10 | −0.21 | −0.08 | −0.05 |
Hispanic or Latino, percent, July 1, 2016, (V2016) | −0.04 | −0.08 | −0.12 | −0.11 | −0.14 | −0.26 | 0.02 | 0.04 |
White alone, not Hispanic or Latino, percent, July 1, 2016, (V2016) | 0.04 | 0.10 | 0.09 | 0.09 | 0.14 | 0.25 | 0.06 | 0.04 |
Foreign born persons, percent, 2011–2015 | −0.10 | −0.11 | −0.16 | −0.14 | −0.20 | −0.29 | −0.12 | −0.14 |
High school graduate or higher, percent of persons age 25 years+, 2011–2015 | 0.02 | 0.08 | 0.04 | 0.07 | −0.01 | −0.02 | −0.14 | −0.20 |
Bachelor's degree or higher, percent of persons age 25 years+, 2011–2015 | 0.08 | 0.10 | 0.05 | 0.07 | 0.00 | −0.06 | −0.02 | −0.08 |
Median household income (in 2015 dollars), 2011–2015 | 0.02 | 0.03 | −0.01 | 0.00 | −0.03 | −0.12 | −0.05 | −0.08 |
Per capita income in past 12 months (in 2015 dollars), 2011–2015 | 0.10 | 0.11 | 0.08 | 0.09 | 0.04 | −0.03 | −0.01 | −0.05 |
Persons in poverty, percent | −0.02 | −0.04 | −0.05 | −0.03 | −0.03 | 0.02 | 0.00 | 0.02 |
Feel school is important for their later life-6 | 1.00 | 0.96 | 0.94 | 0.92 | 0.94 | 0.87 | 0.89 | 0.84 |
Feel assigned schoolwork is meaningful and important-6 | 1.00 | 0.90 | 0.89 | 0.89 | 0.82 | 0.85 | 0.80 | |
Feel school is important for their later life-8 | 1.00 | 0.97 | 0.91 | 0.84 | 0.90 | 0.80 | ||
Feel assigned schoolwork is meaningful and important-8 | 1.00 | 0.91 | 0.86 | 0.92 | 0.84 | |||
Feel school is important for their later life-10 | 1.00 | 0.94 | 0.93 | 0.90 | ||||
Feel assigned schoolwork is meaningful and important-10 | 1.00 | 0.87 | 0.86 | |||||
Feel school is important for their later life-12 | 1.00 | 0.94 | ||||||
Feel assigned schoolwork is meaningful and important-12 | 1.00 |
Results from the study indicate that our stated hypothesis was false. Analysis of the data from the state of Pennsylvania suggests that diversity within the community, socioeconomic level, or education level are not associated with student perception of school worthiness. Students from all backgrounds can have a negative perception of school worthiness and the perception is prevalent across middle and high school grades.
Further studies need to be conducted to confirm if the conclusion holds true across the country. Similarly, validation studies correlating student perception of school worthiness and their individual demographic variables need to be performed to further verify our conclusion. The current study utilizes census data as indicators of student demographic variables.
Nevertheless, the data indicates that it is imperative upon policy makers, school administration, and teachers to investigate how to change the prevalent negative perception about school worthiness amongst students. Results are a clarion call from the students that the current system is not meaningful or important to them. There seems to be a large disconnection between their expectations of learning and our deliverables. Students' expectations range from an interactive educational environment in the classroom where ideas and discussion happen between the students and interaction between students and teachers. While the reasons for such disconnection could vary amongst different groups of students, one of the common reasons amongst iGen is the use of technology in the schools (Levin and Arafeh,
In an era when success and failure of schools and teachers are determined in large part by assessment scores, the freedom to adopt changes at a macro level that would yield sustainable positive change in student perception may be limited. Nevertheless, school administrators and policy makers must analyze resource allocation, flexible scheduling, criteria for academic success, and dependency between student learning outcomes and teaching effectiveness.
The most realistic chance for changing the negative perception amongst students lies in the hands of classroom teachers. Those who have taught in schools for generations can attest that baby boomers learned in a formal and structured environment. Students from Gen-X studied through group work in an interactive learning process. Millennials studied using multisensory approaches and within collaborative environments. Teaching iGen would require us to realize that apart from increasing the use of meaningful technology in the classroom to engage the students, we need to start focusing on teaching skills rather than content. Content is easily accessible to the students at all times. Devoting instruction time on teaching students soft and hard skills required for success in the future would be more beneficial to these students (Alcock et al.,
It is not clear from this study if the transition to middle school is a variable in low school worthiness for 6th grade students, or if they have started losing interest in education from elementary school. More research needs to be conducted to identify the grade level in which students start to lose interest in education. Regardless, this study suggests that the attempts to motivate the students and ignite the yearning for education should be concentrated at elementary and middle school level.
In conclusion, the study suggests that students from 6th grade and above have a negative perception of school worthiness and such a perception is ubiquitous across the student population. There is no relationship between demographic factors and the negative student perception. It would require a philosophical and pedagogical change in the manner in which we teach the students in the school environment. Only then will we witness classrooms full of motivated students sparked with a desire to learn and make a difference.
VS and AS were responsible for design of experiment, data collection, analysis, and manuscript preparation.
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: