CHAPTER 10 LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION

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CHAPTER 10LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION
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Learning Objective

• What is the typical developmental course of
  language development?

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Mastering Language

• Language
• Defined as a communication system in which a
  limited number of signals sounds, letters,
  gestures can be combined according to
  agreed-upon rules to produce an infinite number
  of messages

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Mastering Language What Must Be Mastered?

• Words (symbols) and rules must be mastered
  phonemes, morphemes, syntax, semantics,
  pragmatics, and prosody
• Phonemes basic units of sound that can change
  the meaning of a word
• Example substitute the phoneme /c/ for /m/ in
  the word man changes the meaning of the word
• Morphemes the basic units of meaning that exist
  in a word
• View is one morpheme
• Add the morpheme re to get a two-morpheme word
  with a different meaning review
• Add pre to get another two-morpheme word with
  another different meaning preview

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Mastering Language What Must Be Mastered?

• Phonemes, morphemes, syntax, semantics,
  pragmatics, and prosody (continued)
• Syntax the systematic rules for forming
  sentences
• Fang Fred bit. or Fang bit Fred. or Fred bit
  Fang. Which violates the syntax of English?

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Mastering Language What Must Be Mastered?

• Phonemes, morphemes, syntax, semantics,
  pragmatics, and prosody (continued)
• Semantics understanding the different meanings
  of language
• Sherry was green with jealousy does not mean
  that Sherry was green, literally

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Mastering Language What Must Be Mastered?

• Phonemes, morphemes, syntax, semantics,
  pragmatics, and prosody (continued)
• Pragmatics of language rules for using language
  in different contexts
• We might say Chill! to a peer, but not to a
  respected family member

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Mastering Language What Must Be Mastered?

• Phonemes, morphemes, syntax, semantics,
  pragmatics, and prosody (continued)
• Prosody how the sounds are produced
• The melody of speech, including pitch,
  intonation, accentuation of syllables in a word
  or words in a sentence, and the duration or
  timing of speech
• We might say, Oh, yeah in response to a friend
  who asks if we are ready to go, but Oh, yeah?
  to express doubtfulness or disbelief

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When Does Language Develop?Before the First Words

• Newborns are attuned to human speech, show a
  preference for speech over nonspeech sounds and
  for their native language
• Can distinguish between phonemes such as b and p
  or d and t
• By 7½ months, infants demonstrate word
  segmentation ability when they detect a target
  word in a stream of speech
• They understand that The cat scratched the dogs
  nose is a string of six words, not one word

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When Does Language Develop?Before the First Words

• Infants produce sounds that exercise the vocal
  cords and provide opportunities to learn how
  airflow and different mouth and tongue positions
  affect sounds
• By 5 months, infants know that their sounds
  affect caregivers behaviors
• Parents respond to as many as 50 of
  prelinguistic sounds as if they were genuine
  efforts to communicate
• Prelinguistic sounds and the feedback infants
  receive pave the way for meaningful speech

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When Does Language Develop?Before the First Words

• Milestones in vocalization
• Cooing around 6 to 8 weeks of age
• Repeated vowel sounds such as ooooh and aaaah
  when babies are content
• Babbling around 4 to 6 months
• Repeated consonant-vowel combinations such as
  baba or dadada for the pleasure of making an
  interesting noise
• By 8 months of age, infants babbling begins to
  include the intonation patterns (accent) of the
  language that they hear and is restricted to the
  phonemes of the language
• These utterances sound a great deal like speech

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When Does Language Develop?Before the First Words

• Comprehension (reception) occurs before
  production or expression of language
• 10-month-olds, on average, can comprehend about
  50 words but do not produce any of them
• Around 1 year, infants seem to understand
  familiar words
• Use cues to connect words with their referents
  (objects, people, or ideas represented by a name)
• Important social cue is joint attention social
  eye gaze two people looking at the same thing
• Infants see parents pointing, labeling, directing
  their gaze and make the connection between words
  and their referents
• Children use syntactic bootstrapping to determine
  the meaning of a word
• Where a word is placed in a sentence

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When Does Language Develop? The First Words

• An infants first meaningful word spoken around
  1 year is a special event
• Holophrases first words that convey an entire
  sentence of meaning
• Shoe means There is Mommys shoe or
• Shoe means I want to put my shoes on my feet
• 1-year-olds can use holophrases for naming,
  questioning, requesting, and demanding
• At the same time, they begin to use nonverbal
  symbols, gestures such as pointing or raising
  their arms

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When Does Language Develop? The First Words

• 1-year-olds talk about familiar objects and
  actions
• Nelson (1973) found that 2/3 of early words were
  common nouns representing the objects and people
  that children interacted with daily (mommy,
  kitty)
• The objects were nearly all things that children
  could manipulate (bottle, ball) or that were
  capable of moving on their own (animals, trucks)
• Children also acquire words that facilitate
  social interaction (hello, no, bye-bye)

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When Does Language Develop? The First Words

• Vocabulary acquisition proceeds one word at a
  time
• At 18 months, when the child has about 30 to 50
  words, the vocabulary spurt occurs and the pace
  of word learning quickens dramatically
• Pinker (1995) estimates that a new word is
  acquired every two hours during this time
• Children seem to realize that everything has a
  name and by learning the names of things, they
  can share what they are thinking with others, and
  vice versa

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When Does Language Develop? The First Words

• Rapid vocabulary acquisition may involve some
  mistakes
• Overextension the use of a word to refer to a
  too-broad range of objects or events
• All furry, four-legged animals are dogs
• Underextension the use of a word in too-narrow
  fashion
• Kitty is used only for the family pet and not
  in reference to other cats
• Semantic errors such as overextension may occur
  because children want to communicate but dont
  have the vocabulary they need

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• Caption The range of individual differences in
  vocabulary size from 16 to 30 months

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When Does Language Develop? Telegraphic Speech

• The next step in language development is
  telegraphic speech about 18-24 months of age
• Two-word sentences to express basic ideas
• Like telegrams, the utterances contain critical
  components and omit articles, prepositions, and
  auxiliary verbs
• A form of functional grammar that emphasizes the
  semantic relationships among words, the meanings
  being expressed, and the functions served by
  sentences (naming, questioning, or commanding)

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When Does Language Develop? Telegraphic Speech

• Overregularization represents continued language
  development
• Foots or goed or mouses
• The child has inferred the morphological rules of
  adding s to pluralize nouns or ed to signal
  past tense
• In overregularization, the child overapplies the
  rules to cases in which the proper form is
  irregular

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When Does Language Develop? Telegraphic Speech

• Children must learn to use rules for creating
  variations of basic declarative sentences
• For example, converting a statement into a
  question, a negative sentence, or an imperative
• Linguist Noam Chomsky proposed that language be
  described in terms of transformational grammar
  rules of syntax for transforming basic thoughts
  into a variety of sentence forms

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When Does Language Develop? Later Language
Development

• The average first-grader starts school with a
  vocabulary of about 10,000 words and adds
  somewhere between 5 and 13 new words a day
  throughout the elementary-school years
• Middle childhood and adolescence bring
  metalinguistic awareness knowledge of language
  as a system
• Adolescents are better able to understand and
  define abstract terms and are better able to
  infer meanings that are not explicit

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When Does Language Develop? Later Language
Development

• Adults retain their knowledge of phonology and
  syntax
• Adults often expand their knowledge of semantics
  (word meanings) and refine their pragmatic use of
  language (adjusting language to social and
  professional contexts)
• Hearing impairments, cognitive deficits, or
  memory problems/retrieval problems can affect
  adults language skills

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Learning Objectives

• What is the neurobiological basis of language?
• What are the main features of the nativist and
  learning theories of language acquisition?
• Which explanation is best supported by research?

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How Does Language Develop? Neurobiology of
Language

• Recent research regarding neural activity reveals
  that the left hemisphere shows increased activity
  when listening to speech and the right hemisphere
  is active when processing the melody or rhythm of
  speech
• fMRI studies show that areas in both the left and
  right hemispheres are active in womens brains
  when processing language, whereas activity in
  mens brains is more typically localized in the
  left hemisphere

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How Does Language Develop? Neurobiology of
Language

• Wernickes area and Brocas area are connected
  with a band of fibers
• Typically, incoming language is processed
  comprehended in Wernickes area and then sent
  to Brocas area via these fibers to be turned
  into speech
• Damage to this band of fibers can leave a person
  with a type of aphasia, a language disorder in
  which a person might hear and understand
  linguistic input but be unable to vocally repeat
  the information

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How Does Language Develop? Nurture
Environment and Learning

• Childrens language development is influenced by
  their environment
• Learn the words they hear spoken by others
• More likely to use new words if they are
  reinforced for doing so
• Children who have encouraging, interactive
  caregivers are more advanced in early language
  development
• However, imitation and reinforcement are not the
  best explanations for childrens acquisition of
  syntax (grammatical rules)

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How Does Language Develop? Nurture
Contributions of Biology

• Chomsky (2000) proposed that humans have a unique
  genetic capacity to learn language
• Equipped with universal grammar, system of common
  rules and properties for learning any language in
  the world
• 75 of the worlds languages have the basic order
  of subject-verb-object or subject-object-verb
• Exposure to language activates the language
  acquisition device (LAD) which sifts through
  language, applies the universal rules, and
  tailors the system to the specifics of the
  language spoken in the childs environment

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How Does Language Develop? Nurture
Contributions of Biology

• Evidence for the nativist perspective on language
  development
• The learnability factor children acquire an
  incredibly complex communication system rapidly
  and without formal instruction
• All children progress through the same sequence
  of language development at similar ages and make
  the same kinds of errors
• Suggests that language development is guided by a
  species-wide maturational plan

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How Does Language Develop? Nurture
Contributions of Biology

• The universal aspects of language development
  occur despite cultural differences in adults
  styles of speech with children
• Researchers believe there is a period for optimal
  language development a sensitive period when
  language processing areas of the brain are shaped
  by early experience with language

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How Does Language Develop? Nurture
Contributions of Biology

• There is evidence that the capacity for acquiring
  language has a genetic basis
• Some human linguistic competencies are shared by
  chimpanzees and other primates (e.g., the ability
  to combine symbols to form short sentences)
• Identical twins score more similarly than
  fraternal twins on measures of verbal skills
• Certain speech, language, and reading disorders
  appear to run in families

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How Does Language Develop? Nature and Nurture
Working Together

• Interactionists believe that both learning
  theorists (nurture) and nativists (nature) are
  correct
• Childrens biologically based competencies and
  their language environment interact to shape the
  course of language development
• Language acquisition is interrelated to other
  developments (perceptual, cognitive, motor,
  social, emotional) that are taking place
  concurrently with language acquisition

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How Does Language Develop? Nature and Nurture
Working Together

• Interactionists emphasize the ways that social
  interactions with adults contribute to childrens
  language development
• Child-directed speech describes the speech adults
  use with young children
• Short, simple sentences spoken slowly in a
  high-pitched voice with repetition and
  exaggerated emphasis on key words
• Adults may use expansion a more grammatically
  correct or complete response to a childs
  verbalization
• Kitty goed elicits Yes, the cat ran away

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Learning Objectives

• What factors influence infants motivations to
  master their environments?
• How do early education programs affect infants
  development?

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The Infant Mastery Motivation

• Mastery motivation appears to be inborn and
  universal
• Will display itself in the behavior of all normal
  infants without prompting from parents (e.g., how
  to open a cabinet door)
• Appears higher when parents provide sensory
  stimulation designed to arouse and amuse their
  infants
• Flourishes when infants have a responsive
  environment that provides them opportunities to
  see that they can be effective, successful in
  their efforts

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The Infant Early Education

• Parents are often encouraged to purchase special
  products to promote infant intellectual
  development
• Most experts disagree that children can benefit
  from special educational experiences before age 3
• Elkind (1987) believes that children need time to
  socialize and play
• May lose self-initiative and intrinsic motivation
  if pushed to achieve at early ages

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The Infant Early Education

• Research suggests that overemphasis of academics
  during the preschool years may undermine
  achievement motivation
• But preschool programs that stress both play and
  academic skill-building activities can be
  beneficial to young children, especially
  disadvantaged ones
• Disadvantaged children who attend programs
  specially designed to prepare them for school
  experience more cognitive growth and achieve more
  success in school than disadvantaged children who
  do not attend such programs

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The Infant Early Education

• Research suggests that children also benefit when
  parents are educated about the importance of
  early environment and experiences
• Positive effects on later school achievement are
  especially likely if the early education
  experience stimulates childrens cognitive
  growth, gets parents more involved with their
  childrens education, and includes follow-up
  during elementary school

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The Child Achievement Motivation

• Explaining differences in childrens achievement
  motivation
• High achievers have a healthy attributional style
  mastery orientation
• Attribute success to internal and stable causes
  such as high ability
• Attribute failures to external factors beyond
  their control or on internal causes that they can
  overcome, such as insufficient effort
• Do not blame the internal, stable factor of low
  ability

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The Child Achievement Motivation

• Explaining differences in childrens achievement
  motivation
• Low achievers have a helpless orientation
  attributional style tendency to avoid
  challenges and to cease trying when they
  experience failures based on the belief that they
  can do little to improve
• Attribute success to the internal cause of hard
  work or to external causes such as luck or
  easiness of the task
• Do not experience pride or self-esteem
• Attribute failures to the internal, stable cause
  of lack of ability

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The Child Achievement Motivation

• Characteristics of the child that contribute to
  achievement levels and motivation to succeed
• Age or developmental level
• Before age 7, children tend to think they can
  succeed on any task
• With age, childrens perceptions of their
  academic abilities become more accurate
• Childrens belief that ability is changeable and
  that they can become smarter and improve their
  ability if they work hard leads them to adopt
  mastery goals aiming to learn new things so
  they can improve their abilities
• Mastery goals dominate through the lower
  elementary grades

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The Child Achievement Motivation

• Characteristics of the child that contribute to
  achievement levels and motivation to succeed
• Age or developmental level (continued)
• As children age, they begin to see ability as a
  fixed or stable trait and begin to adopt
  performance goals
• Aim to prove their ability rather than improve it
• Children who continue to focus on mastery or
  learning goals tend to do better in school than
  those who switch to performance goals

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The Child Achievement Motivation

• Characteristics of the child that contribute to
  achievement levels and motivation to succeed
  (continued)
• Level of intelligence
• Motivation and achievement goals are higher when
  children value a subject when they believe it
  is important

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The Child Achievement Motivation

• Contributions of parents to childrens
  achievement and motivation
• Stress and reinforce childrens independence and
  self-reliance
• Emphasize the importance of meeting high
  standards of performance
• Get involved with childrens education and
  emphasize practices that stimulate curiosity and
  engagement in learning
• Provide a cognitively stimulating home
  environment

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The Child Achievement Motivation

• Contributions of schools to childrens
  achievement and motivation
• Educational practices
• Schools are structured to emphasize childrens
  performance goals by rewarding grades rather
  than mastery or learning goals.
• School climate
• Academic achievement is greater when schools
  encourage family involvement and regular
  parent-teacher communication

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Learning Objectives

• What are the components of learning to read?
• Is there a most effective way to teaching
  reading?
• What distinguishes skilled and unskilled readers?

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The Child Learning to Read

• Before children can read, they must understand
  the alphabetic principle
• The idea that the letters in printed words
  represent the sounds in spoken words in a
  systematic way

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The Child Learning to Read

• Phases of learning the alphabetic principle
• In the prealphabetic phase, children memorize
  selected visual cues to remember words
• In the partial alphabetic phase, children learn
  the shapes and sounds of letters

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The Child Learning to Read

• In the full alphabetic phase, children make
  connections between written letters and their
  corresponding sounds
• Apply phonological awareness sensitivity to the
  sound system of language that enables them to
  segment spoken words into sounds or phonemes
• In the consolidated alphabetic phase, letters
  that regularly occur together are grouped as a
  unit
• Example ing is perceived as a unit rather than
  as three separate letters

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The Child Learning to Read

• Factors that influence emergent literacy
• The developmental precursors of reading skills in
  young children
• Activities that strengthen childrens working
  memory and attention control, such as repetitious
  storybook reading
• Reading with the child by asking questions in
  order to deepen understanding
• Engaging in rhyming stories and games to foster
  phonological awareness
• Activities that expand childrens semantic
  knowledge, such as providing definitions and
  assigning meaning to printed symbols

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Learning to Read Skilled and Unskilled Readers

• Skilled readers
• Understand the alphabetic principle
• Have a higher level of phonological awareness
• Read all the words
• Unskilled readers
• Skip words or parts of words
• Have difficulty with phonology

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Learning to Read Skilled and Unskilled Readers

• Dyslexia
• Reading disability experienced by children who
  have normal intellectual ability and no sensory
  impairments or emotional difficulties that would
  explain difficulty learning to read
• Dyslexia may involve problems with visual
  perception or auditory perception

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Learning to Read Skilled and Unskilled Readers

• Deficiencies in phonological awareness are
  apparent before school age
• Brain imaging studies reveal distinctive patterns
  of neural activity, which suggests that a
  perceptual deficit may develop during the
  prenatal period

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Learning to Read Skilled and Unskilled Readers

• Difficulty analyzing the sounds in speech causes
  trouble in detecting sound-letter correspondences
• In turn, this impairs the ability to recognize
  printed words automatically and effortlessly
• So much time and effort in decoding words leaves
  too little attention for interpreting and
  remembering what was read
• Dyslexia is a lifelong disability

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Learning to Read How Should Reading Be Taught?

• Two broad approaches to reading instruction
• The phonics approach
• The whole-language approach
• The phonics (code-oriented) approach teaches
  children to analyze words into the component
  sounds (letter-sound correspondence rules)
• The whole-language (look-say) approach emphasizes
  reading for meaning by teaching children to
  recognize words by sight or to determine meaning
  by using contextual clues

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Learning to Read How Should Reading Be Taught?

• Research supports the phonics approach to
  teaching reading
• To read well, children must learn that spoken
  words are made up of sounds and that the letters
  of the alphabet correspond to these sounds
• Phonological awareness leads to better reading
  skills
• However, reading programs that use both phonics
  and whole-language approaches help children learn
  letter-sound correspondences and find meaning and
  enjoyment in what they read

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Learning Objectives

• How does school affect children?
• What factors characterize effective schools?

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The Child Effective Schools

• Some characteristics of schools have less
  influence than other factors upon childrens
  performance
• As long as funding is adequate and used wisely,
  increased resources have not been shown to
  improve school effectiveness
• Modest reductions in the student-teacher ratio
  are not likely to increase student achievement
• But small-group or one-on-one tutoring in the
  kindergarten through third grades, especially for
  disadvantaged and low-ability students, makes a
  difference in reading and mathematics
  performances

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The Child Effective Schools

• Research shows only minimal effects on
  achievement when schools have implemented modest
  increases in the length of the school day or year
• Ability grouping when students are grouped
  according to ability and taught with
  ability-level peers has no clear advantages
  over mixed-ability grouping for most students
• Ability grouping can be beneficial to
  higher-ability students if they can move more
  quickly through a higher-level curriculum
• Lower-ability grouping may deny students access
  to effective teachers and instruction and create
  stigmatization

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The Child Effective Schools

• Some characteristics of schools have a great deal
  of influence upon childrens performance
• Characteristics of the students
• Genetic differences in aptitude
• Socioeconomic status
• Characteristics of the teachers
• Are well prepared and qualified
• Strongly emphasize academics
• Create a task-oriented, comfortable atmosphere
• Manage discipline problems effectively

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The Child Effective Schools

• Goodness of fit an appropriate match between
  the persons characteristics and her environment
• Highly achievement-oriented students adapt well
  to unstructured classrooms in which they have a
  great deal of choice
• Less achievement-oriented students often do
  better with more structure
• Students tend to have more positive outcomes when
  they and their teacher share similar backgrounds

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• Caption Teacher effectiveness matters

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Learning Objectives

• What changes in achievement motivation occur
  during adolescence?
• What factors contribute to these changes?
• How does science and math education in the United
  States compare to science and math education in
  other countries?
• What are the pros and cons of integrating work
  with school during adolescence?

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The Adolescent Declining Levels of Achievement

• At the transition from elementary school to
  middle school, achievement motivation,
  self-esteem, and grades may all decline
• Gutman and colleagues (2003) identified the
  following risk factors for a decline in academic
  achievement
• Minority group status
• Low maternal education and mental health
• Stressful life events
• Family size
• Father absence

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The Adolescent Declining Levels of Achievement

• Explanations for achievement may be found in
  examinations of
• Characteristics of the individual
• Family and peer influences
• Context of school and society

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The Adolescent Declining Levels of Achievement

• Explanations for achievement characteristics of
  the individual
• Children become increasingly able to
  realistically evaluate their strengths and
  weaknesses and may lose self-esteem and high
  expectations of success
• Students who have a performance orientation
  believe that success is a matter of luck have
  lower grades
• Those who maintain an emphasis on mastery or
  learning goals attain higher grades in high
  school

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The Adolescent Declining Levels of Achievement

• Explanations for achievement characteristics of
  the family
• Potential risk factors
• Minority group membership, single-parent family,
  and having a mother with less education or mental
  health problems
• Higher academic achievement associated with
• Living in a small, caring family with at least
  one stable parent who uses consistent discipline
• Mothers who talk to their middle-school children
  about assuming responsibility and making
  decisions
• Students perceptions that parents are involved
  in their schooling

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The Adolescent Declining Levels of Achievement

• Explanations for achievement context of school
  and society
• Peer influence
• At times can undermine parents and teachers
  efforts to encourage school achievement
• Teens may be concerned with popularity, may want
  to avoid looking dumb, or may want to be average

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The Adolescent Declining Levels of Achievement

• Peer pressures that undermine achievement
  motivation tend to be especially strong for many
  lower-income males as well as minority students
• African-American and Hispanic peer cultures in
  many low-income areas actively discourage
  academic achievement
• European-American and especially Asian-American
  peer groups tend to value and encourage academic
  achievement

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The Adolescent Declining Levels of Achievement

• Explanations for achievement context of school
  and society
• Some decline in achievement motivation may be
  attributed to a poor person-environment fit
• Transition (switching schools) to middle
  school/junior high school may be especially
  difficult when it occurs simultaneously with the
  physical and psychological changes of puberty

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The Adolescent Declining Levels of Achievement

• The fit between developmental needs and the
  school environment affects adolescent adjustment
  to school
• When adolescents are seeking more autonomy and
  becoming more intellectually capable, they may
  transition to a school environment that is
  characterized by
• Larger size, more bureaucracy
• More impersonal student-teacher relationships
• More emphasis upon grades
• Fewer opportunities for choice
• Less intellectual stimulation
• More rigid discipline

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The Adolescent Declining Levels of Achievement

• Explanations for achievement context of school
  and society
• The middle-school slump can be lessened by
• Supportive teachers
• School staff that understands and responds
  appropriately to students developmental needs
• Mothers who display high interest in academics
  and hold high expectations

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The Adolescent Science and Mathematics
Education

• On mathematics and science achievement tests,
  U.S. students score above the international
  average but significantly below achievement
  levels in nations such as Singapore, Japan, and
  Korea
• The achievement gap between American and Asian
  students seems to be rooted in cultural
  differences in attitudes concerning education and
  educational practices

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The Adolescent Science and Mathematics
Education

• Cross-cultural research on education and
  achievement shows
• Asian students spend more time being educated
• Asian students spend about 95 of their class
  time listening to the teacher and completing
  assignments
• Teachers have different approaches to instruction
• In China, more time in math classrooms is spent
  questioning and discussing correct answers

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The Adolescent Science and Mathematics
Education

• Cross-cultural research on education and
  achievement shows (continued)
• Asian students, especially Japanese students, are
  assigned and complete considerably more homework
  than American students
• Asian parents are strongly committed to the
  educational process homework, monitoring
  childrens progress, following teachers
  suggestions

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The Adolescent Science and Mathematics
Education

• Cross-cultural research on education and
  achievement shows (continued)
• Asian peers value school achievement and have
  high standards
• Time with peers often involves doing homework
• Asian parents, teachers, students all share a
  strong belief that hard work or effort will pay
  off in better academic performance (learning
  goals)

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The Adolescent Integrating Work and School

• In the U.S. and Canada, between 1/3 and 1/2 of
  teens work part-time during their high school
  careers
• Steinberg and colleagues compared working and
  nonworking high school students
• Working students appeared to gain knowledge about
  work, consumer issues, and financial management,
  and sometimes about greater self-reliance

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The Adolescent Integrating Work and School

• Steinberg and colleagues compared working and
  nonworking high school students (continued)
• High school students who worked 20 hours each
  week had lower grade-point averages, compared to
  nonworking students or those who worked 10 or
  fewer hours per week
• Working students were more likely to be
  disengaged from school bored and uninvolved in
  class, prone to cut class, and spend little time
  on homework

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The Adolescent Integrating Work and School

• Steinberg and colleagues compared working and
  nonworking high school students (continued)
• The more adolescents worked,
• The more independent they were of parental
  control
• The more likely they were to be experiencing
  psychological distress (anxiety, depression, and
  symptoms such as headaches)
• The more frequently they used alcohol and drugs
  and engaged in delinquent acts

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The Adolescent Integrating Work and School

• Other researchers found that
• Academically struggling students are the ones
  likely to work more hours
• Working reduced the number of math and science
  courses that students enrolled in
• Mortimer and colleagues (1996) found a more
  positive perspective
• Working 20 hours or more a week did not hurt
  academic achievement, self-esteem, or
  psychological adjustment

83
The Adolescent Integrating Work and School

• The damaging effects of working while attending
  high school may be related to the nature of the
  work adolescents do
• Fast-food service or manual labor are routine,
  repetitive jobs that offer few opportunities for
  self-direction or decision-making and rarely call
  for academic skills such as mathematics or
  reading
• These jobs do not build character or teach new
  skills
• Adolescents may lose mastery motivation and
  become more depressed when they hold menial jobs
  that interfere with their schooling

84
The Adolescent Pathways to Adulthood

• The educational paths and attainments of
  adolescents are influenced by factors that
  originate in childhood
• IQ scores and aptitude for schoolwork
• Level of achievement motivation
• In adolescence, influential factors include
• The quality of the school
• The extent to which parents are authoritative and
  encourage school achievement
• The extent to which peers value school

85
The Adolescent Pathways to Adulthood

• Students who achieve good grades are more likely
  to complete high school
• 92 of European Americans
• 86 of African Americans
• 85 of Asian Americans
• 70 of Hispanic students
• Students who complete 4 or more years of college
• 30 of European Americans
• 17 of African Americans
• 49 of Asian Americans
• 11 of Hispanic students

86
Learning objectives

• How does achievement motivation change during
  adulthood?
• How do literacy, illiteracy, and continued
  education affect adults lives?

87
The Adult Achievement Motivation

• Adults with strong achievement needs are more
  likely to be competent workers than adults who
  have little concern with mastering challenges
• Adults achievement-related motives are more
  affected by changes in work and family contexts
  than by the aging process
• Elders who have a sense of purpose, direction,
  and achievement enjoy greater physical and
  psychological well-being than those who do not

88
The Adult Literacy

• Literacy is the ability to use printed
  information to function in society, achieve
  goals, and develop ones potential
• Literacy among U.S. adults is unevenly
  distributed
• 14 demonstrate the lowest level, roughly
  third-grade or lower reading ability
• 29 have basic literacy skills sufficient to use
  a television guide or compare prices
• 13 demonstrate proficient literacy

89
The Adult Continuing Education

• Nearly 40 of college students are 25 years or
  older
• Often motivated to attend college by internal
  factors such as personal enrichment or
  work-related reasons
• Internal motivation often leads to deeper levels
  of processing information, greater effort to
  understand material because they want to learn
  and want/need to use the material

90
The Adult Continuing Education

• Continued education allows adults to remain
  knowledgeable and competitive in fields that
  change rapidly
• Higher education is associated with maintaining
  or improving physical and mental health