Help-Seeking Avoidance in Language Arts High School Students and Teacher-Developed Counter-Methods

Master's Thesis from the year 2007 in the subject Pedagogy - School Pedagogics, grade: A, Southern Illinois University Carbondale (Curriculum & Instruction), language: English, abstract: Help-Seeking is a learning strategy which the self-regulated student can use to improve academic achievement. The purpose of this study is to find ways to enhance high school students' understanding and learning, raise their grades, and lower the prevalence of task avoidance, faking, and cheating, by encouraging the students to seek more help than they usually would in Language Arts classrooms. Subjects to my study were 44 top track junior English students, 10 third track freshman English students, 14 junior honor German students, six Language Arts teachers, as well as four case studies. After investigating the reasons for help-seeking avoidance as well as help-seeking over-eliciting, I offered help in different areas - teacher-directed intervention, peer-review and collaborative learning, and technological/media support. Results indicated that in most students, the help-seeking behavior had not changed after my student teaching, but the majority acknowledged help tools such as writing conferences as important to attain higher grades. While some students used help tools, others rejected them openly. They know what is out there - remains to use it! The practical implications for the Language Arts classroom are discussed.