This discussion focuses on adolescent academic achievement and performance in educational settings. As you have or will read, there are many factors playing a role in adolescent school performance. The scholarly article discusses some of this in a peer-reviewed paper that helps you become more familiar with research methods.
By successfully completing this discussion activity, you will demonstrate Module Outcome 3: Summarize the factors affecting adolescent school performance.
The major purpose of this discussion is to help familiarize you with published research in the field of human development. In Part #1, you will read a current article about factors impacting academic performance and comment on what you have learned by answering some semi-structured questions. In Part #2, you will find a journal article that relates to developmental tasks developed during adolescence and tell us about it by writing an APA style abstract. The article needs to be related to at least one factor that impacts academic performance
For full credit, please complete both parts of this discussion.
Part 1: Read the article, "Instructional context and student motivation, learning, and development: Commentary and implications for school psychologists."
After reading, thoughtfully complete the following:
- What were your reactions to the article? Was something interesting, unclear, amusing, etc.?
- Explain why you believe this article is relevant to the course material in this module.
- List three facts found in the article that you found interesting or important.
- Is there something left unanswered you would like to know?
- Discuss how what you have learned in this article and module can be used in your professional career.
Part 2: Professional Journal Abstract Assignment
Go to the Excelsior College library website and perform an article search on an aspect of adolescent development you are interested in. The topic of the article must encompass at least one of the developmental tasks developed during adolescence. Identify a scholarly article from a professional journal where the author(s) describes the purpose, method, and results of a scientific investigation.
Read the article, and complete the following:
1. Identify your article by including a full APA style reference. Information about how to cite and reference in APA format can be found at the EC Library.
2. Briefly summarize the research article using the headings most common to such empirical reports. These include the Introduction, which generally states a rationale for the investigation and the purpose of the study. The introduction also reviews relevant research. Next is the Method section, which includes a description of the participants, instruments, and procedures. The Results section follows next, which addresses the significant findings of the study. Finally, comes the Discussion and Conclusion where the author(s) summarize(s) the findings and future directions.
Note that in writing an abstract you do not want to reproduce or summarize the entire article. Rather, you want to provide the most salient information, as succinctly as possible. Be sure to briefly explain how this relates to academic performance. If you use information directly from the article, you MUST properly cite the information by putting quotation marks around the words you are copying, followed by the page number in parentheses. Not doing this is a violation of the Excelsior College academic integrity policy.
3. Type your one-page abstract.