The Role of the Teacher in Fostering a Positive Impact through Warm Demanding versus the Academic Performance of Students in Public School Setting: A Correlational Study
This part of the research is a review of literature and related studies on the role of the teachers in using warm demanding or not and how it influences the academic performance of public school students. Warm demandingness is not just about caring to students, but also include insisting them to meet expected and actual academic standards of learning. In view of the previous literature on the subject, many authors (e.g., Holland, 2012; Sullivan, 2010) have found the efficaciousness of the pedagogical technique of warm demanding, as well as, other contributory factors (e.g., sociodemographic status) in helping to achieve class objectives and school goals for students’ to have successful academic life.
According to Sullivan’s (2010) findings about teacher pedagogical practices as perceived by elementary school students, warm demanding was appreciatively a form of discipline. Despite the teaching workforce being predominantly middle-class, female and White faculty members while the student body were essentially minority students, cultural congruency was an issue among Afro-American students. The underlying reason for the said issue was that the teachers’ cultural background was different from their learners. Consequently, there was a cultural dissonance between the classroom teachers’ teaching praxis and students’ learning style. Further, Sullivan (2010) has also investigated not just the teachers’ pedagogical practices, but also studied students’ perception of their learning in the classroom.
Among the main findings of Sullivan (2010) was the positive impact of teachers’ warm demandedness among students as a disciplinary measure. Students appreciated warm demandingness by the teachers because students perceived it as part of their learning process. With warm demandingness, discipline, and culturally relevant teaching-learning processes, the teachers were viewed by students as effective in their teaching practice. Moreover, through a culturally relevant warm demandedness in the classroom, there is also open communication such that teachers listened and valued their students’ voices. Thus, the study’s author recommended the need for better pre-service teacher education programs and preparedness so that the students of these incoming in-service teachers would have a more positive view of the teaching-learning culture. In a critical light, Sullivan’s (2010) research results are consistent with this study’s purpose about the significance of warm demanding.
Other than Sullivan’s (2010) fourth grader students who appreciated their teachers’ warm demandingness, Khan (2012), on the other hand, examined how secondary school students’ academic achievement as being related to teachers’ self-efficacy (that is, personal and professional ability to bring about the desired academic performance in their learners). At the outset, the researcher mentioned how significant the implications were of the concept “teacher’s self-efficacy.” Nearly eight times the ratio of student-participants was to teacher-participants and Khan (2010) conducted his study using a teacher efficacy scale survey questionnaire. In analyzing his data, he used a correlational statistics consistent with this study.
Khan (2012) concluded that a significant association existed between students’ academic performance and teachers’ self-efficacy using Pearson product moment. Among the male Math subject teachers, they showed high level of self-efficacy than their female counterpart. On the inverse, female English subject teachers outperformed their male counterpart when it came to their self-efficacy. In this study, however, it was only hypothesized that there is either a significant or insignificant relationship between teachers’ warm demandingnes and students’ academic performance, but not specifically among subject teachers who teach similar or different areas. The research would only consider whether teachers’ warm demandedness has a positive influence or not on students’ academic learning.
Before advancing further, it can be seen from the previous studies that warm demandingness has a clear affirmative and confirmatory advantage as a pedagogical approach on students’ academic performance. Students positively view it, just like teachers who showed high perception of its effectiveness in actual teaching scenarios. More can be said about the benefits of warm demandingness other than among a particular minority group of elementary and secondary learners, respectively, in a certain locality (that is, that of Sullivan’s fourth grader African-American students or Khan’s secondary school Pakistani students). In the literature review that follows, it is not simply about minority African-American students, but also them (specifically, Afro-American boys) who lived in poverty whose teachers’ self-efficacy influenced the academic performance positively.
Warm Demandingness Among Disadvantaged Students
Holland (2012) studied successful teachers who taught in urban setting where male students live in poverty. Using an integrated, sequential explanatory design technique, he explored the culturally relevant pedagogical beliefs of urban teachers who taught poor boy students. The literacy gain scores of the participants showed how successful teachers were in their use of culturally relevant classroom techniques. Of the four teachers interviewed, he divulged that each of them integrated culturally relevant teaching practices, or in other words, culturally relevant practices as being integral in their class. Teachers’ belief about cultural relevance were also conveyed, not just in the classroom, but also on how teachers related with the poor students’ parents.
Further, through close parent-student-teacher relations, such as home visits, warm demanding became evidently a part of teacher and students’ interaction; hence, better student engagement with teachers and their parents, and vice versa. As expressed by the respondents of the study, it was the teachers’ and parents’ relationship that was the most prominent aspect of successful teaching in the participants’ setting. Because the student-participants perceived the triad as a warm demanding and culturally relevant communication, it positively impacted on their academic learning. Teachers, likewise, demonstrated their use of various teaching approaches that meet students’ expectations, classroom needs, and socio-emotional development.
Moreover, the teacher-participants of the study have described the poor male students as being more active, aggressive and challenged in expressing strong emotion in their communication than girls. Inferably, not only the male students prefer warm demandingness and culturally relevant classroom atmosphere, but also in and out of the school (that is, between their parents and teachers’ relationship). Holland’s (2012), thus, offered at insight on how to go about doing my own research as to the role of warm demandingness and culturally relevant instruction for successful pedagogical implementation. However, there are other studies where warm demanding, self-efficacy, cultural relevance, and teacher-student-parent relationships are significant for student academic achievement, such as standard-based instruction..
Hensberry (2012) did slightly the above in his research about the pedagogical practices and perceptions of highly self-efficacious teachers of black students from math classrooms. He hypothesized initially how successful teachers were supportive of their initially low achieving black and poor students in math. He further posited at first that culturally responsive instruction and standard-based teaching were pedagogical methods that support underperforming black students for them to afterward more likely succeed in math. However, just like previous researches have indicated, standard-based instruction, because of its open and contextualized nature solving discourses and problems, students do struggle.
As such, Hensberry’s (2012) study has extended the use, not just of standard-based teaching, but also culturally responsive instruction for learners to succeed in their math subject. Through a nomination process, two math teachers who were highly effective teaching students with color became participants of the research. Based on the individual responses, it was seen whether their instruction were standards-based or culturally responsive, or both. When the observations, interviews and documents collected from them were analyzed (that is, as themes emerged from the data), both the elementary and high school teachers were found to be warm demanders. Both of them showed strong caring, respectful and positively demanding relationship with their learners.
In addition to what was said above about Hensberry’s (2012) findings, the case studies that he conducted from the math classrooms using as participants the two nominated teachers, he also made detailed descriptions of the teacher-participants’ goals, as well, as their daily teaching beliefs and practices, not to mention the psychological milieu of their classrooms. Despite some similarities and differences in teachers’ pedagogical practices, one was more warm demanding than the other. Additionally, despite being both strongly caring and demanding, one of them was more culturally responsive than the other and utilized standards-based instruction as compared to the other who was more procedurally-based and yet adhered to pedagogy of poverty. As such, Hensberry’s study is also attuned with my own research because my hypothesis could either be accepted or rejected depending on the warm demandedness of particular teachers in comparison to others, taking into consideration intervening and other mediating factors.
Considering that my study includes the socio-economic status of teachers as they use or not use warm demandingness in their classroom, Allen’s (2013) own study about gender-based learning environment and pedagogical approaches where related to self-efficacy and academic achievement. Because it was a mixed methods participatory action research, I would likewise explore whether such variables are related to one another or not. For one, Holland’s (2012) study focused only on male students; whereas, Allen’s (2013) focused only among female students. The latter revealed that female learners in both non-accelerated female-only learning environment and non-accelerated mixed gender classrooms have increased ability in their math self-efficacy and thereby academic performance. The only difference was that female students in mixed gender learning atmosphere had higher growth of self-efficacy as compared to those in single gender classroom environment.
Summary
Allen (2013), Henberry (2012), Holland (2012), Khan (2012), and Sullivan (2010) have found the effectiveness of teachers’ warm demandingness in relation to students’ academic performance (that is, taking into consideration other related contributory factors and variables). Nevertheless, this study has only assumptions and hypothesis that still need to be examined and proved. Likewise, the intended participants of my study would be math and English teachers and their students. At this point, the sample size of my research will be statistically determined, but nevertheless, mixed gender. Furthermore, the study will be limited and delimited based on the research gap found relative to various relevant existing literature and related studies regarding warm demandingness and academic performance.
References
Allen, D. (2013, January 1). Teaching Strategies and Gender Based Learning Environments: How They Relate to Self-Efficacy, Participatory Behaviors, and Academic Achievement. ProQuest LLC.
Hensberry, K. R. (2012, January 1). The Instructional Practices and Perspectives of Highly Effective Teachers of Black Students: Case Studies from Mathematics Classrooms. ProQuest LLC.
Holland, J. M. (2012, January 1). Successful Emergent Literacy Head Start Teachers of Urban African American Boys Living in Poverty. ProQuest LLC.
Khan, S. A. (2012). The Relationship between Teachers' Self-Efficacy and Students Academic Achievement at Secondary Level. Language In India, 12(10), 436-449.
Sullivan, V. A. (2010, January 1). Student Perceptions of Teacher Pedagogical Practices in the Elementary Classroom. ProQuest LLC.
