Case Studies
Case A
According to Banerjee (2016) social economic challenges are at the forefront of putting a child at a disadvantaged position. Children from socially and economically challenged backgrounds have high possibilities of underachieving in various subjects. The state government of Virginia is among those that are emphasizing on the essentialness of widening participation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects and related careers. On the quest of increasing students’ performance in standardized STEM test it is important to understand the causes of this failure. These children are being held back from achieving their full potential in STEM subjects by factors that are beyond their control, including, ethnicity, gender and poverty. A child born in an underprivileged background is bound to face many challenges in life, this means that the child will have to endure compromised learning trajectories, reduced employment opportunities and lower income thereby setting a trend and a vicious cycle of poverty (Banerjee, 2016). It is important to break this cycle and uplift the disadvantaged in the society.
Therefore, understanding the factors that contribute underperformance in the school will help in the development and implementation of strategies that will help in boosting the performance of these students. These students are at the adolescent stage and the fact that most of them come from minority groups means that they experience situations that can be deemed unfair. A survey conducted on minority students in junior high revealed that despite the tender age of these students they have encountered situations that can be perceived as racial/ ethnic discrimination (Banerjee, 2016). Survey data has gone ahead to indicate that any form of discrimination has a high possibility of causing psychosocial and academic side effects. First generation students from minority groups which make up the majority of these students experience language barriers that put them in a disadvantaged position. The teacher’s perception of these students is another cause of underperformance. As these children begin their early education in stages such as kindergarten the minority students are rated lower than their white counterparts regardless of their academic ability (Banerjee, 2016). Survey data suggests that teachers base their initial rating of students on ethnicity.
A lack of positive attitude towards school and learning can also be a contributing factor to low academic scores in low-SES and ethnic minority students. Research has identified an association between negative emotions and cognitive performance of students living in poverty (Isik, et al., 2018). These children come from economically challenged backgrounds, neighborhood economic hardship has been described as an important predictor of low attainment in math. Familial factors such as lack of parental academic involvement, authoritative parenting, lower maternal education and family background is among the factors that contribute to the low performance of these students. Families play an important role in the lives of their children, academic and otherwise (Isik, et al., 2018). As a result, children that come from families living in poverty and unemployment have lower chances of having their families involved in their education. Parental academic engagement has proved to have strong effects on socially and economically disadvantaged children.
Inconclusion, the majority of the students are from low-SES ad from minority groups living in America. To be able to solve the problem of underperformance in these children it is important to identify the causes and be able to develop a better solution to remedy the situation. Among the factors that cause underperformance among these students is language barrier, lack of motivation and discrimination. It is important to be able to boost the performance of these students with focus on breaking the vicious cycle and poverty.
Case B
According to Kien (2017) social economic inequalities and challenges have continued to hinder the immunization of children from low economic social statuses. For the past five years the school has had to battle measles outbreaks, this case study aims to establish the relationship that exist between the school’s student and the immunization status and the pattern of measles outbreaks. Measles immunization is important and public health vaccination has proved to be one of the most effective public health strategies that is used to control this disease.
This case study aims to systematically locate, quality appraise and synthesize academic literature exploring the relationship that exist between measles outbreaks in children that come from low social economic back ground, the main research questions being addressed are;
- Which factors contribute to the measle outbreaks in children from low social economic backgrounds?
- What are the measures that can be implemented by the school to put an end to reoccurring the measle outbreaks?
Therefore, a literature review will be conducted using various data sources. A Case study that was cried out to review vaccination data of people from low social economic classes from 2006 to 2014 is one source of data and information for the case study. The aim of the study was to determine the magnitude of social economic inequalities in measles vaccines. The study revealed that there was a decrease in measles vaccine coverage rate among families and individuals with low social economic status (Kien 2017). This indicated that children born in ethnic minority groups, have uneducated mothers and living in poverty are less likely to receive the measles vaccination. The measles vaccine coverage declined among children of mothers with more education and belonging to the socially economically stable families.
Measles has been classified as one of the most contagious infectious diseases and fatal for both adults and children (Glatman-Freedman, et al., 2012). The onset signs of this diseases include, fever, cough and rash that follows the 12 days incubation period. Measles is a leading vaccine preventable disease and a cause of child mortality. Among the factors that cause measles outbreaks is social and economic inequalities. Young children from poor backgrounds are at a disadvantage position and most of them do not get the chance to be vaccinated, further complications experienced by these children, including malnutrition, Vitamin A deficiencies and various immune comprising factors may continue to put the children at risk as they increase the potential of outbreaks. Neighborhoods with low-SES families are likely to have low measles vaccine coverage and as a result transmission can occur in epidemic proportions thus resulting to severe outbreaks.
To prevent further outbreaks of measles in the school it is important to have well laid strategic plans. According to solutions presented by Gastanaduy, et al., (2018) the first step of containing the outbreaks is to assemble an outbreak control team. When one student reports a measles outbreak the school should enhance its surveillance to identify additional cases or other students with the diseases. Collaborating with healthcare providers to terminate these outbreaks should also be considered by the board since such outbreaks are a matter of public health. The healthcare providers will be required to administer medical procedures, including proper cases management that includes the administering of Vitamin A. the school should implement control activities to limit virus transmission. Lastly, the school should also be at the forefront of vaccinating unvaccinated students.
Inconclusion, measles is a vaccine preventable disease, measle coverage rates are determined by economic and social factors. Research has revealed that immunization rates among the socially and economically disadvantaged families are low, these families live in concentrated neighborhoods and the chances of an outbreak are very high. The school should take the above described steps to control measles outbreaks that have long been affecting the schools’ student to ensure that the students continue to perform well without any hindering factors.
Case C
According to Chiru, et al., (2012) Project Based Learning (PLB) is a teaching method where students learn by actively engaging in real-life activities and projects. An earlier case study conducted at MIDA Learning Technologies to compare the impacts of project based learning and traditional curriculum concluded that project-based learning is capable of driving students’ outcomes. The research also confirmed that PBL enhances students’ performance as well as increases student’s motivation and engagement and lastly improves the teacher and student interactions. In an attempt to understand the impacts of PBL and teachers’ engagement in grade-level planning sessions on social studies on students from grade four to twelve this cases study examines the depended and independent variables of a qualitative study. The first step is to understand the significant influence the both have on students’ performance. In project-based learning the independent variable to be examined is the method of learning while the dependent variable is the students score. PBL can be termed as a powerful tool that connects students with their communities. PLB is capable of raising student’s achievement in high poverty communities, PLB has proven to be a promising educational approach.
Therefore, the dependent and independent variables are the method and the scores. The data for the case study will be collected from various literature reviews. The purpose of this quantitative, non-experimental and descriptive study is to establish whether PBL helps students develop the understanding needed to transfer their knowledge and skills in order to achieve higher scores as well as the impacts of teachers’ engagement in grade-level planning sessions (Kingston, 2018). Research has already confirmed that PBL has a significant impact on the results of students, a cases study that used ACT Aspire data from grade four students compared the performance of students from six schools. Three school used PBL as a method of teaching and three other schools used the traditional mode of teaching. The results of this study indicated that there is a significant difference between the results of the schools using PBL and those using the traditional teaching approach. This result served as evidence to support the claim that PBL enhances the performance of students in all subjects, inclusive of social studies. Social studies is a subject that requires students to explore content area materials, PBL enables these students to be able to transfer and use their skills to achieve higher assessment scores.
Teachers are expected to be knowledgeable of their professions and maintain a high level of academic standards while in their professional paths teaching learners using various learning methods. Teachers are professionals who are required to be highly qualified in their subject area. Students improvement in certain subjects depends on the teachers understanding of the subject. Dating back to the 20th century institutes that were focused on teacher’s development encountered a lot of criticism and as a result majority of teachers were always skeptical of attending teacher’s development programs. Despite that times have changed and peoples’ perception has changed, teachers are still reluctant in attending staff development programs (Barnard, 2004). Following the boards attempt to conduct a qualitative analysis about teachers perception of the efficacy of subject -specific professional development on the quality of teaching and students learning experience, the purpose of the study would be first to identify teachers perception of staff development programs and to determine whether teacher development programs provide knowledge to educators that in return promotes the students achievement. The results of such a qualitative study should provide the school board with data that can be used to evaluate the position of staff development programs and the changes that are required.
References
Banerjee, P. A. (2016). A systematic review of factors linked to poor academic performance of disadvantaged students in science and maths in schools. Cogent Education, 3(1), 1178441.
Barnard, R. E. (2004). A Qualitative Study of Teachers' Perceptions of Staff Development in Three Public Northeast Tennessee Elementary School Districts.
Chiru, L., & Chiru, C. (2012). Opportunity assessment for the introduction of the integrated learning unit in chemistry education. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 46, 4056- 4060.
Gastanaduy, P. A., Banerjee, E., DeBolt, C., Bravo-Alcántara, P., Samad, S. A., Pastor, D., ... & Durrheim, D. N. (2018). Public health responses during measles outbreaks in elimination settings: Strategies and challenges. Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics, 14(9), 2222- 2238.
Glatman-Freedman, A., & Nichols, K. (2012). The effect of social determinants on immunization programs. Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics, 8(3), 293-301.
Isik, U., Tahir, O. E., Meeter, M., Heymans, M. W., Jansma, E. P., Croiset, G., & Kusurkar, R. A. (2018). Factors influencing academic motivation of ethnic minority students: A review. Sage Open, 8(2), 2158244018785412.
Kien, V. D., Van Minh, H., Giang, K. B., Mai, V. Q., Tuan, N. T., & Quam, M. B. (2017). Trends in childhood measles vaccination highlight socioeconomic inequalities in Vietnam. International journal of public health, 62(1), 41-49.
Kingston, S. (2018). Project Based Learning & Student Achievement: What Does the Research Tell Us? PBL Evidence Matters, Volume 1, No. 1. Buck Institute for Education.
