The main concerns of schools were the knowledge contained inside text books or results of scholastic achievement derived from them. Especially, it is within bounds to say that the purpose of studying in academic high schools is to go on to the advance...
The main concerns of schools were the knowledge contained inside text books or results of scholastic achievement derived from them. Especially, it is within bounds to say that the purpose of studying in academic high schools is to go on to the advanced universities. Highschool students spend most of their time at school elevating their scholastic achievement. If their scholastic achievement is high, they sufficiently manage school life. However, if it is low, they have a tendency to turn to delinquency.
Scholastic achievement is not only a result of inherent factors but also of emotional aspects such as cognitive features and personality formed by learned studying efforts, faith, preference, ambition, self-perception, mental health, learning attitude, noble locus of control etc. From several preceding research results, we found that from the above, locus of control and learning attitude are closely related to scholastic achievement.
Thus, the aim of this research was to investigate the relationships between high school students' locus of control and scholastic achievement, and between learning attitude and scholastic achievement.
Approximately 438 first and third grade highschool students were the subject of study. To exclude disparity between department attributes we selected students purely from genuine academic highs chools.
The instruments of the survey were the Locus of Control test, Learning Attitude test and the grades of Scholarship Evaluation Test (Field of Language, Mathematics , English) which was held in June 2005, nationwide, for measuring Scholarship achievement.
The Locus of Control test used was the one Levenson(1981) developed and Ahn Gi-Duk(1986) translated to fits Korean circumstances. The Learning Attitude test used was <The test of learning Attitude and Habit> developed by Bak Kyung-Suk, Lee Hae-Sun(1976).
The data was processed with the use of statistical package, SPSS(Statistical package for social science, ver.11.0 : SPSS Inc., 2000) to derive frequency analysis, percentage, average, standard deviation, Tverification, correlation analysis, etc at a significance level of 5%.
The following are results obtained from this research.
First, learning attitude and scholastic achievement of high school students showed significant correlation but little statistical significance.
Second, learning attitude and scholastic achievement showed a positive correlation and learning attitude toward learning habits showed higher correlation with scholastic achievement than that toward schoolwork. This shows that if high school students' learning attitudes are satisfactory and positive, scholastic results will be higher and that learning attitudes toward learning habits effects scholastic achievements more than attitude towards schoolwork.
Third, concerning discrepancies originating from the students' locus of control subordinate elements, sex and grade, internal locus of control showed the highest, whereas powerful others locus of control showed the lowest. Concerning locus of control on discrepancies originating from sex, female students showed a higher degree of internal locus of and male students showed higher powerful others locus of control and chance locus of control. However these discrepancies seemed statistically insignificant.
Third grade students showed higher Locus of Control than first grade students. Both groups showed equal levels of internal locus of control and third graders showed higher chance locus of control. These tendencies proved to be statistically significant. Third graders also showed higher chance locus of control, however the difference was statistically insignificant.
Fourth, Female students showed higher and statistically significant levels of learning attitude than their male counterparts. Female students also showed more enduring, positive learning attitudes towards schoolwork and learning habits.
The following can be proposed based on the research results.
First, successive research should be conducted to identify the relationship between locus of control and scholastic attitude.
This research showed internal locus of control of high school students' locus of control to be the highest but scholastic achievement to be generally low. The majority of students showing strong internal locus of control but poor scholastic achievement shows that scholastic achievement is affected by factors other than locus of control. Therefore these factors should be examined to help improve students' scholastic achievement.
Second, successive research should be conducted on the relationship between noble disposition, learning attitude and scholastic achievement derived from scholastic achievements of all subjects generally taught in high schools.
This research was conducted using scholastic achievements of only language, mathematics and English part.. Therefore results may be different, if scholastic achievements of all the fields are used. Different preferences in specific subjects according to sex should lead to discrepancies in locus of control and learning attitudes. Successive research should be conducted to identify this relationship.
Third, for elevation of students' scholarship achievement more efforts and support for promoting autonomous study is necessary.
This research showed that from subordinate elements of learning attitudes, those towards learning habits had higher correlation with scholastic achievements than schoolwork. Also, autonomous study showed a relatively higher correlation compared to other learning habits. Therefore, successive research should be conducted in this area.