by STEPHEN PETER GRAMLICH
Dissertation Chairperson: Jeffrey K. Smith, Ph.D.
Open door admissions at community colleges bring returning adults, first timers, low achievers, disabled persons, and immigrants. Passing and retention rates for remedial and non-developmental math courses can be comparatively inadequate (LAVC, 2005; CCPRDC, 2000; SBCC, 2004; Seybert & Soltz, 1992; Waycaster, 2002). Mathematics achievement historically has been a subject of concern with community colleges, universities, and primary schools (Davis, 1994; MEC, 1997; NCTM, 1989, 2000; Wang-Iverson, 1998). An important statistic of community colleges is that more than 83% of students work full or part-time (NEDRC, 2000; Phillippe & Patton, 2000). Conventional homework time estimates can range from 1-3 hours of homework for every hour of in-class instruction. Self-regulatory learning has been proposed to improve opportunity for math achievement (Bembenutty, 2005; Ironsmith et al., 2003; Jones & Byrnes, 2006; Pajares & Graham, 1999; Schunk, 1990).
Seventeen research questions were made to explore the relative influences of goal setting, time planning, and time usage on mathematics achievement and persistence. Math students from 8 classes at a large, northeastern community college were administered 3 surveys asking self-regulatory questions. Results were found from descriptive statistics, frequency distributions, correlation matrices, t-tests, multiple regressions, and logistic regressions.
Goal setting and time management were significant contributors in the model for predicting non-remedial students' final average. With respect to remedial students’ final average, goal setting was related but all of the time planning and usage variables were not. Non-remedial students may have been more realistic about their course goals. However, non-remedial students were overly optimistic about allocating their time. No practical information regarding math student persistence beyond the first exam was found. Notable statistics from this study included: students spent about 5 to 6 hours per week on their math homework and over 80% worked at least 15 hours per week. Students worked more job hours on average than on all class homework. A possible recommendation to improve achievement is an extra class time for doing homework. Another implication is math educators, first-year workshops, and textbooks could teach the skills necessary for students to create suitable time management schedules and strategies that support students’ course goals.