Theorising students’ performance

A theory may loosely be described as an idea which provides an explanation or understanding of a phenomenon. (Many more sophisticated definitions abound).

A number of scholars have expressed the view that for a “construction” to be referred to as a theory it must meet certain criteria. For example, Eva Jablonka and Christer Bergsten in their article, Theorising in mathematics education research: differences in modes and quality (2010) have presented a detailed discussion of the issue of theorising while presenting the criteria which they believe a theory should encompass. In spite of the focus of the article, the view of Jablonka and Bergsten on theorising may have some resonance with those scholars doing research in areas other than Mathematics.

My purpose in this article is not to present an exposition of theory but to invite us as teachers to do some unorthodox theorising about the performance of our students in the education setting in which we find ourselves. Later, we may want to refine these theories according to extant academic wisdom and share them with colleagues in our field in order to increase understanding of the issue of students’ performance which, in turn, will enable us to craft suitable interventions to help them to improve their performance. This theorising may be about students' performance generally or students' performance in individual subjects. 

I know that there is much information on this issue which teachers may access. And in our theorising we are encouraged to take note of previous studies of the issue with which we are concerned. But, often, in our search for previous research in the area in which we are interested we may find either, that the research was done among students in contexts dissimilar to ours or, very little or no research was done on the issue in our contexts. If we uncritically accept research done in other contexts and use it as a guide to action in our contexts, we seem to be saying that all students in whatever context they are learn in exactly the same way. I am contending that this is not the case and am suggesting that we should, as teachers, put on the “cap’ of researchers  and not be averse to exploring issues of performance or any other issue of interest in our local contexts. It should be quite interesting to do comparisons across sites with the data collected to see what nuances reveal themselves.

There is much in the environment of the school that we do not readily understand. For example, we may faithfully follow the prescribed methodology or we may be creative/innovative with the methodology that we use in the classroom. Yet, our efforts may not have produced the positive outcome which we expected, that is, learning by all students as measured by standardized tests. Why do some students seem to grasp the content and reproduce it while others do not?

We may provide an explanation of our students’ performance based on our observations of and interactions with them. Possible answers to this question may lie among the following – nutrition, methodology, interest of students, personalities of teachers and students, expectations of teachers and students, parental expectations, capabilities of teachers and students, individual and school resources, peer pressure, community culture, the culture of the school among other factors. This list is by no means exhaustive.

However, we should realise that the performance of each student is mediated by different factors. For some students, their performance may be mediated by one factor, others by two or more. In some cases, many students’ performance is mediated by multiple adverse factors (in the case of those who perform poorly) or multiple beneficial factors (in case of those students who perform well) which may retard or aid students’ performance.

The aim of theorizing the performance of our students in the specific contexts in which they are schooled is to arrive at an understanding of how to best devise interventions that would elicit from all students the learning outcomes which have been set by the curriculum/curricula.