Pressures That Disorganize In Secondary Schools PDF Download

[Truncated abstract] Organisation is a key factor for students successful everyday adaptive functioning in schools. Although it is widely recognised that the school system requires students to be organised, particularly at the secondary school level, and that students who are disorganised will be seriously disadvantaged academically if they do not learn how to be better organised, there is only a very limited body of research that has investigated organisation and/or disorganisation in the mainstream student population. A limiting factor for this to date has been the lack of instruments available for measuring this construct. This thesis comprises four separate studies that encompass the development of a new instrument to measure disorganisation among secondary school-aged students. This instrument is utilised to test the hypotheses that male students are more disorganised that female students, and that low achieving students are more disorganised than average and high achieving students. It is also used in an exploratory study to investigate a possible relationship between disorganisation and poor visual-spatial skills. Furthermore, the instrument is utilised in conjunction with semi-structured interviews to develop six case studies portraying the thinking and behaviours of secondary school-aged students who are disorganised. Study One, Phase One, involved focus-group interviews with primary and secondary school teachers to identify key behaviours exhibited by students they considered to be disorganised. The findings were used to write items for the instrument to be developed, which was subsequently titled the Student Disorganisation Scale - Initial Version (SDS-IV). Study One, Phase Two, involved a pilot test of the SDS-IV involving three teachers and 48 Year 9 students (14 to15 years old). The face validity of the items was evaluated and statistical indicators of item functioning were explored. Summary statistics indicated a mean total SDS-IV score of 51.13 and a standard deviation of 30.76. One item was deleted from the SDS-IV to produce the refined instrument, which was titled the Student Disorganisation Scale - Piloted Version (SDS-PV). The SDS-PV produced a Cronbachs Alpha Coefficient of 0.98...