Part B: Student Action Teams: The Research Evidence

1
Part B Student Action Teams The Research
Evidence

• Victorian State Program Phase 2
• Commissioned by VicHealth
• Designed to provide an evidence basis for impact
  of program
• See more details in Holdsworth, Cahill and Smith
  (2003)

2
Setting up the research

• Interviews with students and teachers at a small
  number of primary and secondary schools in the
  program
• Asked them to describe the aspects of their
  programs that worked well
• Asked them to describe program outcomes
• Used student terms to design a survey that asked
  how frequently these descriptors happened in
  programs
• Asked also about outcomes - worse, same or
  better?
• For teachers skills inventory, impact on school
  etc

3
Survey analysis Descriptors

• Produces three Program Descriptor Factors
• Student reports of frequency of
• Sense of meaning/purpose
• Sense of control
• Sense of bonding/belonging

• 14 Program Description Questions
• I got to have a say
• I felt proud of what we had achieved
• I felt proud of the way we worked together
• We worked as a team
• We were the ones who did the work
• Everyone got a chance to be heard
• We decided what happened in this project
• We overcame difficulties as they came up
• We worked together even when we disagreed
• We improved our team work and cooperation skills
• We chose something we thought was important to
  work on
• We did something worthwhile
• We got to help others in our school or community
• We got to know each other better

Factor Analysis of Student Responses
4
Reminder the Nancy Phillips picture
Sense of bonding with family/peers/community, to
feel/be wanted, to feel/be loved, to belong, to
have basic needs met
Sense of control capability, competence, impact
on ones own environment, power over ones self,
use of social/life skills, power to change ones
self and environment
control
bonding
meaning
Sense of meaning to feel important, to feel
relevant, self-esteem, sense of dignity/honour,
able to accomplish tasks
After Nancy Phillips, 1990
5
Survey analysis Outcomes

• Self-reported changes to students
• Connectedness to school
• Connectedness to teachers
• Connectedness to peers
• Self-esteem
• School work

6
Survey analysis Linking Descriptors and Outcomes

• Program Outcomes
• Self-reported changes to students
• Connectedness to school
• Connectedness to teachers
• Connectedness to peers
• Self-esteem
• School work

• Program Descriptors
• Student reports of frequency of
• Sense of meaning/purpose
• Sense of control
• Sense of bonding/belonging

By participant gender, year level, team size
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Outcomes 1 Strong Correlations

• Students who experience a high sense of meaning
  and purpose within their program, also report
  greater changes to their school, teacher and peer
  connectedness and to their self-esteem and school
  work.
• These are highly significant correlations (plt.01)
• Similarly, students rating their programs low on
  sense of meaning are highly significantly more
  likely to report lower changes on all impact
  scales.

8
Outcomes 1 Correlations (cont.)

• Sense of belonging also correlates highly with
  all impact scales and these correlations are also
  highly significant.
• Sense of control correlates strongly with
  school connectedness and somewhat less strongly
  with (in order) changes to school work, changes
  to self-esteem and changes to teacher
  connectedness - though all these correlations are
  still highly significant.

9
Outcomes 2 Gender

• These correlations are generally stronger for
  boys than they are for girls except for teacher
  connectedness with meaning, and peer
  connectedness with belonging.
• Changes to school connectedness, peer
  connectedness and self-esteem are all perceived
  by boys to be more linked the sense of meaning
  and purpose in the program than are these
  relationships for girls.

10
Outcomes 3 Team size

• In large teams especially certain aspects of the
  organisation of the projects result in high
  pay-off in impact.
• In large teams, sense of meaning in the project
  is strongly correlated with impact in most areas,
  but particularly with school and peer
  connectedness and with self-esteem.
• In smaller teams, the strong correlations are
  between both meaning and control with school
  connectedness, and also between belonging and
  self-esteem.

11
Outcomes 3 Team size (cont.)

• In larger teams, it is particularly necessary to
  build in a high sense of meaning, control and
  belonging. In smaller teams, you can get away
  with more.

12
Summary

• Students saw control, purpose and bonding as
  important descriptors of what happened in
  successful Student Action Teams
• The occurrence of these descriptive factors was
  strongly correlated with outcomes for students
• The strongest correlations were with meaning or
  purpose
• These correlations were stronger for boys and for
  large teams - this implies the importance of
  ensuring that these program elements occur