Effects Of Perceived School Climate And Self-Directed Learning On High School Students' English Achievements

It is now universally recognized that language learning has to be a lifelong process.And as defined by Tough and Knowles,Self-directed learning is a sort of learners' self-management to choose their way to make a plan to learn and carry it out,in which individuals take the initiative and the responsibility for their learning outcomes,that is,take charge of their own learning.And nowadays high school students are endowed with more time and feasible ways to learn,and they are educated to learn on their own instead of in a traditional way.As exposed to a more tolerant world flooded by information and modern technology,they are getting more open-minded about their connections to external factors including the relationships and atmosphere they detect in the learning environment.To explore the implicit effects imposed by the external environment and high school students' choices on learning methods,scientific statistic method is necessarily exploited.With identifying the links in between,it may serve the purpose of offering statistic evidence for future study in question.Subjects concerning this study are selected from a key high school.The total of the sample is 195 from four classes,two key classes and two ordinary classes.The data of their English achievement has been collected through the mid-term examination and the total of valid questionnaires is 195 with invalid ones being removed.As the SPSS 17.0 is employed in this study,descriptive statistic and correlation analysis are conducted to evaluate to what extent the factors are related to English achievement.In addition,AMOS 22.0 is utilized to build an optimized model to test out all the index and analyse the influence path.With the structural modeling established,the direct and indirect effects on English achievement could be revealed.The research attempts to explore the following questions:(1)What are the general features of secondary school students' self-directed learning herein? What about the perceived school climate?(2)Are there any statistically significant differences between English learners at high and low level of English achievements in self-directed learning? And how about the differences in perceived school climate?(3)Is there close correlation among self-directed learning,perceived school climate and English achievement? If so,to what degree?(4)What are the factors involved in self-directed learning and perceived school climate that have direct or indirect impact on English achievement? And what is the specific influence path like?Findings suggest as follows:(1)The tendency of self-directed learning for most participants is rather positive(M=180.02,SD=9.3407),besides,the atmosphere they perceive in school is at a medium level showing not strongly suppotive(M=105.226,SD=9.3407).The findings prove the validity and reliability of the Self-Directed Learning Readiness Scale(SDLRS)(Cronbach' Alpha=0.843,cumulative%=63.09)and Perceived School Climate Inventory-M(PSCI-M)(Cronbach' Alpha=0.807,cumulative%=60.86);(2)Significant differences are noted in high and low ratings in English performance according to students' scores on some of the aspects of the SDLRS and PSCI-M,such as Passive Learning(T=-4.184,P<0.05,cohen's d=0.86,power=0.99),Love of Learning(T=3.879,P<0.05,cohen's d=0.8,power=0.99)and Teacher-student relation(T=2.693,P<0.05,cohen's d=0.56,power=0.86);(3)Significant associations exist in the variables of the SDLRS and PSCI-M,such as teacher-student relation(r=.193,P<0.05),passive learning(r=-.280,P<0.05)and love of learning(r=.249,P<0.05).(4)The optimized model indicates that teacher-student relation imposes indirectly influence on English achievement(r2=0.09,power=0.25)via passive learning(r2=0.12,power=0.4)and love of learning(r2=0.1,power=0.29).Also,passive learning and love of learning separately make contribution to students' English achievement,which means the better teachers get along with students,the less likely students are to be passive towards English learning,and also the more interested they are in it.Therefore,their grades are finally promoted.Based on previous results,the model shows great fitness(?2/DF<3;P>0.05;GFI>0.9;AGFI>0.9;RMSEA<0.05).The pedagogical implication of this research indicates:(1)Teachers are supposed to positively deal with their relationship with students by motivating students' enthusiasm in and attitude towards English learning,which imposes significant influence on students' academic achievement;(2)From the perspective of students,they ought to pay attention to benign development of teacher-student relationship and make themselves experience active learning behavior from rapport interaction with teachers,so that they have confidence in English learning and get improvement at last.