Investigating the Structure and Process of Academic Emphasis on Student Achievement: A Multi-Level Analysis
Abstract
Academic emphasis is used as a predictor of student achievement in this multilevel
analysis controlling for student and campus demographics. Academic emphasis
represents a desirable characteristic in a school’s overall climate because it embodies the
campus’ pursuit of academic excellence. Action theory and social cognitive theory are
used to explain the influence of social norms of the organization and their relationship to
student academic achievement. The study also investigates the degree to which academic
emphasis is associated with the environmental social context of the campus.
This study served two purposes. The primary purpose of this study was to
determine the relationship between campus level academic emphasis and individual
student academic achievement. The multi-level analysis allowed the author to control for
student race/ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic and at-risk status as well as the proportion
of campus demographics and school size. Secondly, the author conducted a multiple
regression analysis to determine the relationship between the level of academic emphasis
and the environmental social context of the school.
The samples of 10,464 students from the 97 campuses represent some of the
largest and most diverse school districts in Texas. From this sample, the author was able
to determine academic emphasis is a positive and significant predictor of academic
achievement and dampened the effect of student demographics, socioeconomic and at risk
status. Students in the schools with the highest level of academic emphasis
compared to the school schools with the lowest levels of academic emphasis achieved as
many as 39 scaled points higher in math and 20 scaled point more in reading. Furthermore, the multiple regression model used to predict and measure the relationship
between the environmental social context of the campus and academic emphasis
explained almost 11% of the variance. Academic emphasis is a part of the social context
of the school focused on high academic expectations.
Citation
Barron, James Bakewell (2014). Investigating the Structure and Process of Academic Emphasis on Student Achievement: A Multi-Level Analysis. Doctoral dissertation, Texas A & M University. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /152545.