Special Programs for Special Students I. Providing Assistance to Nontraditional Students

Catherine Hurt Middlecamp and Elizabeth Kean Chemistry Tutorial Program, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison. Wi 53706

Failures are exnensive in both human and economic terms. We wish to challenge the common assumption that failure is either acceptable or inevitable for particular groups of stu- dents. The causes of failure are often thought to lie with the students. Thev do not have the necessarv background: thev - . "

cannot reason properly, they are lazy; or they are prevented bv nersonal circumstances from workine hard enough. - .

We believe that failure is not the simplematter thatit might amear. There is no sinele nattern to academic failure. Instead. . . . . inilure dcl~vnd> on interxtiun.; among students, cuntcnt. nnd ttachinr a \ r s t e ~ ~ ~ . F:ic~~lt\, m d dudent< huth vu~urihute I<, failure.

Student Contributions to Failure In some cases, student contributions to their own failure are

fairl? slql,lrimt They may htiw iosuiticien~ I ~ w k ~ r ~ , u n d in mdtht~m~ni~~s. poorly &vihped reasmink skdis, ,,r inadi:qu~ite study ikili,. Th*.ir S I L K ? rim, m:rs IIC. linnittd II? the ne1.11 to work long hours or by crises in their personal lives.

Less obvious are the cultural and social factors that can contribute to failure. Minority students, for example, may exnerience difficulties in their relationshios with maioritv

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teachers and students. They may he unwilling to initiate contacts with white students because of fear of reiection. even though such cooperation aids learning. Finally, studen& who have no role models from their own culture mav exnerience . . Ion( 11nt.s. ;md di.cour:,xwnr~n. lin studt 111 >ewes thqt hidher w d s . a t t i~~tdes , <*I \,,Iueb arv i n co~~fl ta ,~ u i t h ~hosi. d t h , . i l l -

;&ion, learning may be extremely difficult.

Faculty Contributions to Failure Faculty expect certain characteristics in the students who

enter their chemistry courses. Such characteristics may be stated (prerequisite mathematics or chemistry courses) or unstated (expectation of a certain level of mathematical preparedness or reasoning ability). Students who meet these expectations have a reasonable chance of success; students who do not, often fail. Many minority and nontraditional students are in this latter group.

The expectations of faculty influence not only what they teach. hut also how thev teach it. The resultine curriculum decisions determine whaf. opportunity nontraditional students will have to overcome their initial deficiencies. The followine examples illustrate how these decisions can affect the ability of nontraditional students to succeed.

students with poor hackgr&nds, the halance between amount of material and depth of presentation is critical. If faculty quickly introduce numerous ideas with little elaboration, then less time can be riven to contextual develonment. Students with poor backgrounds have little chance io gain real com- petency; instead, they must memorize much of the material. Differences between students are less important in courses where a smaller number of topics are treated with greater at- tention to context.

The absence of mathematics prerequisites for chemistry courses can mislead both students and staff. Faculty com- monly assume that they can teach the "one or two skills" that students need for a particular calculation. However, facility

in mathematics is more than the abilitv to carrv out a oartic- ular operation, for it also depends on fluency in those opera- tions. If a student cannot quickly manipulate numbers, rec- ognize computational errors, and handle abstract reasoning, the need to learn chemistry and develop mathematical skills simultaneously may be overwhelming.

A burden is also imnosed on students with minimal hack- ground knowledge whkn they are forced to find their own in- troduction to a rewired tonic. This mieht hannen. for ex- " . . ample, in a course in which laboratory experiments occa- sionally fall ahead of related lecture material. Those students who have seen the requisite information in previous courses need to soend far less time and enerev orenarinr for the lab- -.. . - oratory than do the more naive students.

Decisions relating to information processing skills of stu- dents. Most faculty want students to leave their courses proficient in solving chemical problems. Presumably students who do not possess problem-solving skills at the beginning of the course will acquire them during the course. Although problems assigned in the course are intended to develop these skills, such skills are often not taught explicitly, leaving dis- advantaeed students unable to comolke the oroblem as- signments. If faculty were to teach broblem-sblving skills explicitly, weaker students would have a better chance to on~plete the course. For example, these skills could be taught usine a series of examoles of increasine comnlexitv that were designed r t r in, reuie studenti':nv.~reness ~i l)rtll,lv~~~-;t~l\.ing strate~ie.. The l~llnl standanl dneved s , d i i I I ~ t I w wme r h ~ ~ has akays applied.

Demandinr hirh level skills earlv in the course is one wav - - faculty can give an advantage to students with initially stroneer nroblem-solving skills: another is bv allowing a dis- crepakybetween the level of problems used for teachl'ng and testing. The difficulty of assigned problems or of those worked in class indicates the level of proficiency required, giving students the opportunity to develop the appropriate skills. When tests ask higher level questions than students have previously seen, an advantage isgiven to those who have had the exposure to advanced problem-solving techniques in their previous schooling.

These examples are typical of the ways in which faculty decisions can affect the ability of students to succeed in a course. No one factor bv itself makes failure inevitable for nontraditional s11thui ; yet, the nn.~in~~il . i t iu~~ 8 r r -twh h,~rr~t.r, st;icks the deck in f.wr,r 111 st~tcimt.. wile meet the ~r:ldiri<o~~al expectations.

Finallv. since our educational nrocess is a social one in- volving the interactions of human beings, the attitudes of facultv affect student nerformance. Teachers can make stu- dents'feel smart or stipid, encourage them to seek help, or discourage students from seeking help. Furthermore, all persons have biases of one sort or another which are commu- nicated in personal interactions. Our intent is not to say which attitudes faculty should hold, hut to he mindful that our at- titudes impact, often differentially, upon our students.

Rationale lor Changing Courses: Changing Students The curriculum decisions and attitudes of facultv. then. can

>,ftect which ,tiid~ntn qucLeed i n tIlt.ir ,wurst,. In I I I ~ decade t , i thr A0., thwe ma). III.:~ wed t o 1na1;v 1 h:~ngpc i n 111e rhvm-

960 Journal of Chemical Education

istry curriculum to accommodate increased numhers of non- traditional students. At present, students who are enrolling come from a broad socioeconomic spectrum and divergent cultural and academic backgrounds. Fewer of them have the expected level of thinking skills.' Their academic preparation has included less attention to basic skills such as independent acquisition of knowledge, analytical thinking, and problem ~olving.~ In the next several decades, as the number of eight-

them to enroll in introductory chemistry courses. When faced with increasing numhers of students who do

not meet their expectations, faculty have limited options. If the teaching system with its traditional expectations about student background is left unchanged, i t is likely that there will be an increase in the number of failing students, with nontraditional students carrvine a dis~rooortionate share of

in academic standards. either of these options is likely to have broad appeal.

A third option is to modify the teaching system to account for the changes in student characteristics. This is only possible if faculty believe that student deficiencies are correctable by such aid. If the causes of failure are believed to reside in some unchangeable characteristics of students (e.g., a low IQ or the inability of women to think abstractly), there will be little impetus to provide assistance. In such instances, a token program might be established for political reasons, hut the low expectations for success will limit the commitment.

Furthermore, since the causes of fiilure are varied, the aid provided must address specific causes in order to he effe~tive.~ Faculty might he faced with the need to develop new com- petencies s;ch as the ability to teach problem-solving. The curriculum could he modified to include study and thinking skills as legitimate goals for the chemistry courses. There is evidence students can profit from instruction directed at advancing their ability to function at higher cognitive leveh4 Adding these new objectives might mean sacrificing some chemical content but need only require modest changes in the amount of material covered."

Another Option: Creating Compensatory Programs It is also possible to respond to the needs of nontraditional

students by instituting a special assistance program to provide compensatory instruction, leaving the content and teaching system intact for the traditional student. Several factors de- termine whether this alternative is feasible.

for their difficulties, a special program is more likely. Likewise, if the impetus for aiding nontraditional students comes from outside of the chemistry department (such as from adminis- trators or faculty in other departments whose majors are failing chemistry service courses), it is less likely that an as- sistance program will be integrated into the usual chemistry teaching system.

A less obvious set of factors relates to the visibility and status of the target group to he served by the special program.

' Herron, J. D., J. CmM. Eouc., 50, 146 (1975). "University of Wisconsin System Basic Skills Task Force Report,"

Madison, Wisconsin, May 1979. This issue will be dealt with in the second article in this series. Lawson, A. J., Research in Science Teaching, 19,63 (1982). Karpius, R. el al., "Science Teaching and the Development of

Reasoning." University of California, Berkeley, 1977. W n the other hand. faculty may become more likely to institute

changes in the basic educational system if they perceive that students who are most like them in culture and socioeconomic class also have serious basic skill needs.

The civil rights movement gave visibility to the educational needs of Black and to a lesser extent, Hispanic peoples. Per- ception of the needs of Native Americans, the uhvsicallv . . I~:~t~dicnppt 11. nud a.cmlv n ha, la:g,.d, i t i i h ~ ~ e yr ,~pl : haw had r v i l 1 1 1 1 1 I t i c a l I . Ex-c ut idt.ntii~(.ntim. UU-

litical expediency,and the availability of additional fund& for special proprams have been maior factors in establishment of special programs. In the next few years, majority students may be least likely to receive attention to their needs, no matter how deficient their basic skills.6 As long as students needing help are seen as somehow "different," special pro- grams for this visible target population will be likely to arise.

Althoueh manv institutions have found svecial Droerams . " to he useful for aBsisting nontraditional students, the estah- lishment of special programs is not without some less desirable consequences. First, special programs which seek to change students while maintaining the content and teaching system unchanged reinforce the idea that failures are caused by stu- dent deficiencies, rather than by course structures or the teaching system. Putting the burden for failure and remedi- ation totally upon disadvantaged students prevents the fac- ulty from recognizing constructive changes in curriculum which could benefit all students. Faculty sometimes claim that basic changes in their curriculum would mean "lowering standards" or "teachinp high school level chemistry." Such value positions do nodacknowledge that all curricula are somewhat arbitrary, nor that students or their needs may have changed in the years that the current curricula have been in use. Creating special programs does little to encourage flexi- bility of either content or teaching system to accommodate more diverse students.

Second, the creation of a special program which is restricted to an identifiable student group can perpetuate destructive stereotvoes. In eight vears of working with minoritv students ". " . and with students who have experienced difficulty in learning elementarv chemistrv. we have been unable to identifv anv . "

learning th& are unique to minority students, to women, or to any other specific group.

Creating a tutorial program "for minorityidisadvantaged students" unfortunately tends to label all minority students as disadvantaged, when this is certainly not the case. Cultural differences hecome interpreted as deficiencies, and the strengths of nontraditional students remain unnoticed and unrewarded. Moreover, participation in special programs tends to isolate program students from constructive interac- tions with facultv, maintaining them outside of the ednca- tional mainstream.

Finally, in establishing a special program, one runs the risk of estahlishing a program which can become an end in itself. It is often difficult to know when a special program is no longer needed, and when its actions are well enough defined to he incorporated into general programming available for all stu- dents.

A successful special assistance program that operates ex- ternally to the usual instructional system nonetheless may influence that system. Consider, for example, the case where deaartniental courses are graded on a curve. with the facultv expectation that a certain percentage of students will receive low grades. Providing assistance to oroeram students a t the botGm of the class may have the effect of allowing them to imvrove their ~erformance so thev are no longer at the bottom. A new group of students now receives the lowest grades, and thus becomes eligible for assistance. Such "leapfrogging" in courses where students must compete against one another for grades can increase comoetition, frustration, and hostilitv among students.

Conclusions The decisions of faculty have a major impact on which

students succeed in their courses. Most chemistry curricula

Volume 60 Number 1 1 November 1983 961

could be improved by using the incoming skill and knowledge levels of students to determine mechanisms for developing needed competencies. Whether such changes occur by revision of the usual teaching mechanisms or by establishment of special programs external to the main teaching program de- pends upon circumstances in the department. In all cases, there will be some cost associated with the changes, even if only in faculty time for planning changes.

Although numbers of nontraditional students will probably

increase in the near future, this increase probably will not offset the decline in the numbers of traditionalstudents. Thus, we can probably look forward to a shrinking student popula- tion. Unfortunately, there are indications that the per student dollars will also decline, at least in the short run, so that we are challenged to do more with less money. One way to do this is to increase the ability of our systems to deal with more diverse students, without compromising standards, but maximizing the chance for all students to succeed.

962 Journal of Chemical Education