This is the literature review & reference part of the ongoing College English IV course’s academic thesis writing of our group. Future updates of our thesis would also be posted here.
Research topic
Causes and effects of College Students’ Class Skipping Behavior
Literature review
Skipping class is a common phenomenon in many colleges and universities, including University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS). Compared with compulsory education, students in higher education are given more freedom, and the relationship between students and teachers is more relaxed in the system of large class teaching. Therefore, many college students choose to absent themselves from classes for various reasons.
Previous studies on this aspect are relatively few. A study points out that students’ participation in class directly affects their learning effect, and skipping class affects their academic performance by reducing class participation (Kim et al., 2019; Kim et al., 2020). Attending the class physically but doing something else and not listening to the teacher, or listening without paying attention, is also not beneficial to academic performance. This is called “recessive truancy” (Yu, 2008). However, another research links skipping class to students’ levels of confidence, which can be divided into ability beliefs, i.e., whether the student believes he/she have the ability to study well in certain fields, and effort beliefs, i.e., whether the student believes he/she is energetic (Fryer, 2017). Many students are convinced of their inability to do well in the subject and choose to skip classes. Therefore, the causal relationship between skipping classes and grades is uncertain. There have been several studies focusing on the influence of absence from classes. Some find out that attendance of a certain lecture (ENDD 512, which is one of the three courses of endodontic curriculum at College of Dentistry, King Saud Bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences) has weak relation with final grades (Alfadley et al., 2020).
As for the factors affecting the truancy rate, some scholars have studied the relationship between truancy rate and school climate (e.g., an authoritative school climate, which is a school that is strict to its students) (Keppens, 2019). Some research projects focus on the effect of course type on truancy rate (Meng, 2011).
Most of the studies related to this topic used various statistical methods, such as mediation analysis by bootstrapping with multiple replacements and bias-corrected confidence intervals (Kim et al., 2019), correlational study, hypothesis test (Alfadley, 2020), regression analysis (Kim et al., 2020) and PISA test (Keppens, 2020). These methods can be used to mine the meaning in the data and discover the internal links between variables.
However, many other factors have not been thoroughly studied due to the lack of research in this area. Also, these studies mainly focus on one course lectured by one teacher, neglecting the influence of various teaching methods of different teachers and various types of courses on students’ academic achievement. Our research mainly focuses on two aspects, 1) the factors affecting the rate of skipping classes, 2) the influence of skipping classes on students’ academic achievements. Therefore, in the present study, we study other influencing factors, reveal students’ and teachers’ opinions on skipping class phenomenon and find out the mechanism and extent of their influence on students’ academic performance. We believe that a better understanding of the causes and effects of students’ absenteeism could assist students in improving their learning strategy, help teachers find better teaching methods and involve more students in the class.
References
[1] Alfadley, A., Masuadi, E., Mohamed, T.A., & Jamleh, A. (2020). Influence of lecture attendance and prerequisite academic achievement on dental students’ performance in a clinical endodontic course: A correlational study. Saudi Endodontic Journal, 10 (3): 215-220.
[2] Fryer, L. K., Ginns, P., Howarth, M., Anderson, C. & Ozono, S. (2017). Individual differences and course attendance: why do students skip class?. Educational Psychology, 38 (4): 470-486.
[3] Keppens, G. & Spruyt, B. (2019). The School as a Socialization Context: Understanding the Influence of School Bonding and an Authoritative School Climate on Class Skipping. Youth & Society. 51 (8): 1145–1166.
[4] Kim, A. S. N., Nairn, B. C., Popovic, C., Carozza, L. & Balidio, E. C. (2020). Participation is predictive of individual, but not group, work in the context of a blended general education course. The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 11 (3) https://doi.org/10.5206/cjsotl-rcacea.2020.3.8336
[5] Kim, A. S. N., Shakory, S., Azad, A., Popovic, C., & Park, L. (2019). Understanding the impact of attendance and participation on academic achievement. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 6 (4): 272-284.
[6] 孟凡纳（2011）. 大学生逃课行为的意义障碍及其教育干预研究. 硕士论文，西南大学，重庆.
[7] 喻刚勇（2008）. 大学生思想政治理论课逃课问题及对策研究. 博士论文，华中科技大学，武汉.
备注：
读到的文献主要研究方面：
1、研究出勤率对学业表现的影响，重点放在个别影响因素，我们读到的文献有：participation，积极性（包括对自身努力程度的认识(effort beliefs)和对自身能力的认识(ability beliefs)）。
2、提到隐性缺勤的概念，有文章指出上网课时上课的认真程度与学业表现有关联。
3、目前所阅读的文献①在课堂选取上有局限性。不同的课堂风格对学生的出勤率以及学业表现都有影响；②相关研究较少，因此许多影响因素没有考虑。
4、未来的研究可以考虑学生个体的能力、学习热情和努力程度的差异；也可以研究面对面授课与网课的参与程度。