How To Succeed With Academically Underprepared Students

Praise for Overloaded and Underprepared “Parents, teachers, and administrators are all concerned that America’s kids are stressed out, checked out, or both—but many have no idea where to begin when it comes to solving the problem. That’s why the work of Challenge Success is so urgent. It has created a model for creating change in our schools that is based on research and solid foundational principles like communication, creativity, and compassion. If your community wants to build better schools and a brighter future, this book is the place to start.” —Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive and A Whole New Mind “Challenge Success synthesizes the research on effective school practices and offers concrete tools and strategies that educators and parents can use immediately to make a difference in their communities. By focusing on the day-to-day necessities of a healthy schedule; an engaging, personalized, and rigorous curriculum; and a caring climate, this book is an invaluable resource for school leaders, teachers, parents, and students to help them design learning communities where every student feels a sense of belonging, purpose, and motivation to learn the skills necessary to succeed now and in the future.” —Linda Darling-Hammond, Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education, Stanford University “Finally, a book about education and student well-being that is both research-based and eminently readable. With all the worry about student stress and academic engagement, Pope, Brown and Miles gently remind us that there is much we already know about how to create better schools and healthier kids. Citing evidence-based ‘best practices’ gleaned from years of work with schools across the country, they show us what is not working, but more importantly, what we need to do to fix things. Filled with practical suggestions and exercises that can be implemented easily, as well as advice on how to approach long-term change, Overloaded and Underprepared is a clear and compelling roadmap for teachers, school administrators and parents who believe that we owe our children a better education.” —Madeline Levine, co-founder Challenge Success; author of The Price of Privilege and Teach Your Children Well “This new book from the leaders behind Challenge Success provides a thorough and balanced exploration of the structural challenges facing students, parents, educators, and administrators in our primary and secondary schools today. The authors’ unique approach of sharing proven strategies that enable students to thrive, while recognizing that the most effective solutions are tailored on a school-by-school basis, makes for a valuable handbook for anyone seeking to better understand the many complex dimensions at work in a successful learning environment.” —John J. DeGioia, President of Georgetown University

As societal expectations about attending college have grown, professors report increasing numbers of students who are unprepared for the rigors of postsecondary education—not just more students with learning disabilities (whose numbers have more than tripled), but students (with and without special admission status) who are academically at-risk because of inadequate reading, writing and study skills. This book provides professors and their graduate teaching assistants—those at the front line of interactions with students—with techniques and approaches they can use in class to help at-risk students raise their skills so that they can successfully complete their studies.The author shares proven practices that will not only engage all students in a class, but also create the conditions—while maintaining high standards and high expectations—to enable at-risk and under-prepared students to develop academically and graduate with good grades. The author also explains how to work effectively with academic support units on campus. Within the framework of identifying those students who need help, establishing a rapport with them, adopting inclusive teaching strategies, and offering appropriate guidance, the book presents the theory teachers will need, and effective classroom strategies. The author covers teaching philosophy and goals; issues of discipline and behavior; motivation and making expectations explicit; classroom climate and learning styles; developing time management and study skills; as well as the application of “universal design” strategies.The ideas presented here—that the author has successfully employed over many years—can be easily integrated into any class.

This is a book for all faculty who are concerned with promoting the persistence of all students whom they teach.Most recognize that faculty play a major role in student retention and success because they typically have more direct contact with students than others on campus. However, little attention has been paid to role of the faculty in this specific mission or to the corresponding characteristics of teaching, teacher-student interactions, and connection to student affairs activities that lead to students’ long-term engagement, to their academic success, and ultimately to graduation.At a time when the numbers of underrepresented students – working adults, minority, first-generation, low-income, and international students – is increasing, this book, a companion to her earlier Teaching Underprepared Students, addresses that lack of specific guidance by providing faculty with additional evidence-based instructional practices geared toward reaching all the students in their classrooms, including those from groups that traditionally have been the least successful, while maintaining high standards and expectations.Recognizing that there are no easy answers, Kathleen Gabriel offers faculty ideas that can be incorporated in, or modified to align with, faculty’s existing teaching methods. She covers topics such as creating a positive and inclusive course climate, fostering a community of learners, increasing engagement and students’ interactions, activating connections with culturally relevant material, reinforcing self-efficacy with growth mindset and mental toughness techniques, improving lectures by building in meaningful educational activities, designing reading and writing assignments for stimulating deep learning and critical thinking, and making grade and assessment choices that can promote learning.

Even as the number of students attending college has more than doubled in the past forty years, it is still the case that nearly half of all college students in the United States will not complete their degree within six years. It is clear that much remains to be done toward improving student success. For more than twenty years, Vincent Tinto’s pathbreaking book Leaving College has been recognized as the definitive resource on student retention in higher education. Now, with Completing College, Tinto offers administrators a coherent framework with which to develop and implement programs to promote completion. Deftly distilling an enormous amount of research, Tinto identifies the essential conditions enabling students to succeed and continue on within institutions. Especially during the early years, he shows that students thrive in settings that pair high expectations for success with structured academic, social, and financial support, provide frequent feedback and assessments of their performance, and promote their active involvement with other students and faculty. And while these conditions may be worked on and met at different institutional levels, Tinto points to the classroom as the center of student education and life, and therefore the primary target for institutional action. Improving retention rates continues to be among the most widely studied fields in higher education, and Completing College carefully synthesizes the latest research and, most importantly, translates it into practical steps that administrators can take to enhance student success.

First Published in 1985. This is Volume 1 on Relating Instruction to Research borne from a conference that took place at the Learning Research and Development Center (LRDC) of the University of Pittsburgh, one of the major research and development centers The chapters are structured into sections on cognitive skills into three groups: intelligence and reasoning, knowledge acquisition, and problem solving. Each chapter in these volumes was especially requested to fulfill a particular function.

This text looks at how university teachers can teach their students learning strategies. It describes how teachers can teach each strategy in their normal classes and encourage students to use the strategies in their own study time. It includes case studies.