Changing Teaching Practices in Mainstream Classrooms to Improve Bonding and Behavior of Low Achievers

This paper reports the effects of a package of instructional methods on the academic achievement, behavior, and social bonding of seventh grade students who were low achievers in math. Proactive classroom management, interactive teaching, and cooperative learning methods were included. Low achievers in experimental classrooms showed more favorable attitudes toward math, more bonding to school, greater expectations for continuing schooling, and less serious misbehavior as measured by suspensions and expulsions from school than did their low-achieving control counterparts at the end of one academic year. Among low achievers, significant effects of the teaching practices were not found for California Achievement Test scores or for self-reported delinquency or drug use. The results suggest that interventions in mainstream classrooms can promote school attachment and deter misbehavior among low-achieving students. The absence of short-term effects on standardized achievement scores suggests possible alternatives to the authors’ hypotheses, whereas the absence of short-term effects on self-reported delinquency and drug use was consistent with the authors’ hypotheses of delayed effects for these variables.