Inattentive Behavior of Children in
Relation to Variation in School Hours
Tim Chen
Ms. Leong
IB Psychology HL Y1 [1B]
September 27, 2009
Word Count: 1756
Naturalistic Observation Written
Report
Abstract
The aim of this experiment is to evaluate the amount of inattentive behavior that
occurs after a certain amount of hours in school. We hypothesize that as the amount
of school hours increases, the amount of inattentive behavior displayed will also
increase. To carry out this experiment, two 35 minutes observation sessions were
made on a single day; one at the beginning of school and one at the end of school.
From the results of eight different attentive behaviors and their frequencies, it is
concluded that inattentive behavior did increase after six hours of school (end of the
school hours) and is considered harmful to their learning.
Introduction:
What does it mean to be inattentive? How do teachers keep track of how much we
enter our own little world of daydreams? Can long hours of study affect students’
ability to learn? When long hours of school become routines, students like us
constantly want to revisit our world of imaginations to escape the boredom. The
result from these “drift times” compromises the students’ learning ability and
ultimately destroys the information that needs to be learned. In the article “How to
recognize and Counteract Student Inattentiveness in the Classroom” by Dr. Joseph
S.C. Simplicio points out that the average six hour school day routines tends to
cause students to drift into these time lapses more often especially if the school day
consists of only plain academic courses. It proves to be a failure if the students do
not pay attention and therefore do poorly on tests or quizzes mainly because the
teachers fail to recognize these behaviors. Under the pressure of curricular
requirements, teachers tend to overlook these behaviors and continue with their
lessons without grabbing the student’s attention. To model the harmful affects, we
have designed an observational/naturalistic experiment that explores the amount
of student inattentive behavior that occurs depending on the amount of school
hours spent. The purpose of this experiment is to evaluate whether or not the
number of inattentive behavior correlates with the amount of hours spent in school.
We hypothesize that as the amount of school hours increases, the amount of
inattentive behavior displayed will also increase.
Procedure:
Design:
The experiment design is strictly based on observation for collecting samples and
data. We need to make sure that the subjects are not involved and will not be
interacted with. There are no ethical issues at hand because the subjects we are
observing are not physically/psychologically involved with us as observers.
The Method:
The environment in which the experiment took place is a particular third grade
classroom of the elementary building of Shanghai American School. We received
permission from Mr. Harder, instructor of his third grade class, to conduct our data
collection on inattentive behavior. The data collecting duration was designed for two
35 minute sessions of the same day; one in the early morning (8:30AM) and one in
the afternoon (2:30PM). Within each of the sessions, the same group of children
were kept at a constant to maximize data validity. Most of the children were around
10 years of age. The difference in gender, ethnicity, mannerism, personalities,
learning abilities and physical appearances may alter the variable results and are
extremely important to the study because it represents a general population that
can be sampled from a group anywhere across the globe.
One of the two observers was to record inattentive behaviors in one of the two
sessions while the other records from the other session. The classroom consists of
sixteen students half of which are boys while the other half is girls. We created a
tally system for collecting the frequencies of eight specific behaviors that are signs
of inattentiveness and included other peculiar behaviors for study purposes. These
behaviors included:
1) Playing with objects.
2) Looking around the room and outside the window.
3) Comical movements or undefined behavior such as body jiggling, dancing,
playing with skin noises, walking around the classroom playing with tissue.
4) Communication with others verbally.
5) Doodling on paper; drawing out imaginations.
6) Interaction with each other physically
7) Making Distracting noises with the mouth of causing noises with objects and
8) Staring into space (zoning out).
Note that in the morning session, the children had math class and learned about
basic addition and subtraction in problem solving. In the afternoon session, the
children had exposure to science and completed worksheets on sounds and
frequencies and were expected to read graphs and diagrams. Both sessions were
taught by the same instructor and had asked the children questions consistently at
the same rate.
Results: Data and Graph
Non-Attentive Behavior
Number of Occurrences
Number of Occurrences
Types
(PM)
(AM)
Playing with objects
7
9
14
0
Comical movements
4
1
Communication with others
3
2
Doodling
1
0
Interaction with each other
1
2
Making distracting noises
1
1
Staring into space
0
4
Looking around the room
Discussion:
From the data and graphs above, it can be concluded that although certain
behaviors may only been seen either at the beginning of school hours or at the end
of school hours, inattentive behaviors are more frequent by the end of the day. As
shown, staring into space only occurs at the beginning of the day and is a sign of
fatigue caused by either sleep deprivation or early displays of tiredness. Making
distracting noises and interaction with each other were nearly consistent in both
sessions. Frequency of object playing was consistent in both times of the sessions.
Doodling, an extreme sign of inattentive behavior, occurs only in the afternoon when
children start to develop own ideas from their world onto their classroom
worksheets. This shows an increase in physical activity. Also, in the afternoon,
comical movements occurred much more than earlier in the day. These movements
may include peculiar actions such as dancing on the spot or getting tissue and then
throwing them at bookshelves. As the class approaches the end of the day, the
children looked around the room and outside the classroom windows in large
amounts showing signs of irritation and urge to leave their seats. No such behavior
was recorded in the morning. We concluded that inattentive behaviors were higher
in number by the end of the school hours and are mainly caused by long school
hours that led an increase in these behaviors.
In comparison with the research article, it is evident from our data that long
school hours may indeed affect students directly in terms of learning capacity and
cause inattentive behavior that distracts them from absorbing information. The
result is a basis for deleterious effects on learning where students commonly find
themselves not being able to remember anything that was taught. Teachers may
also find themselves having to re-teach certain materials that were missed
throughout these behaviors. It is crucial that teachers take note and utilize new
teaching techniques to help students limit their inattentive behaviors.
Although the children and teacher representation was kept at a constant,
various contributing factors such as the weather (sunny in the morning and rainy in
the afternoon), ethnicities, family background, gender, age, mannerism etc. may
very well affect the overall data collection. However, these limitations occur in any
groups of children of any classroom and this survey focuses on a general
representation of dynamic groups of children with various characteristics. The
strengths of this experiment are the consistency of the same group of children and
the same teacher. Also, all collection was made on one day to ensure that variable
factors that may occur on alternate days were eliminated. The minutes of
observation was also kept strictly at 35 minutes to ensure valid data collection under
a strict time span. There are also weaknesses such as the different observers that
took place in two different sessions and may provide biased results depending on
observation skills. Also, the classroom environment may also influence the
children’s behavior. A plain, undecorated classroom versus a well furnished
classroom with many visuals and playable objects may cause different inattentive
behaviors. Therefore, not all classrooms produce the same results. The data is very
limited to this particular classroom only.
The data supports the article on increased children inattentive behavior caused
by long hours of academic schoolwork. Not only do children fail to reach their full
learning potential, it is also harmful to their learning especially when children are
kept in their seats for more than an hour at a time. The article states that these
behaviors can only be avoided if the educator is extremely aware of these behaviors
and creates alternative ways to grab the children’s attention. The teacher must also
refrain from moving on with the lesson until he or she is certain that the class is
focused and attentive. Therefore, it is imperative that teachers come up with a
solution to effectively deal with the children’s loss in learning and minimize long
hours to deliver a full time learning experience.
Reference:
Simplicio, J. (2001, September). How to Recognize and Counteract Student
Inattentiveness in the Classroom. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 28(3), 199.
Retrieved September 27, 2009, from Psychology and Behavioral Sciences
Collection database.
Appendices
Letter of Approval
Ms. Mcvean’s letter of approval
September 15, 2009
Dear Fay,
We are only too pleased to work in collaboration with you and to support the learning
of your students. The administration confirms approval of your project. Please
have your students request permission directly from classroom teachers for classroom
and student observations.
Thank you,
Sacha McVean
Shanghai American School
Elementary Principal
Pudong Campus
To Mr. Harder’s Letter of Permission
Dear Mr. Harder,
For our year one IB Psychology Y1 assignment, we would like to formally
request your permission for observing the behaviors of your students during your first
block (math) and the last block (science) on September 17th, 2009. Each of these
sessions is 35 minutes each and we request that we are not introduced to the students
in any way. It is strictly for observational purposes only. We have already received an
approval from Mrs. McVean and look forward to conducting our experiment. This is
an observational task we would like to perform in order to collect data on student
inattentive behaviors and how that correlates with school hours for our psychology
reports. We understand the inconvenience it may bring, and thank you for your
cooperation.
Sincerely,
Tim Chen, Isabelle Lee, Andrea Ivarrson