Studying the effect of strengths based approach on attendance, academic achievement and student motivation in english class in higher education

The aim of this study is to examine the effect of Strengths Based Approach (SBA) on attendance, academic achievement and student motivation in English class. For this purpose, an experimental study was carried out on first year students in the departments of Management and Information Sciences and Political Science and Public Management at the Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences at Bartın University in the spring term of 2011-2012 academic year. The sampling of the study consisted of 66 students in total, 33 students from the department of Management and Information Sciences (experimental group) and 33 students from the department of Political Science and Public Management (control group). The implementation was done in English class, which was held two hours a week. Pretest posttest quasi-experimental design with a control group was used in the study. The pretest data on the attendance and academic achievement variables were collected in the fall term of the same academic year and the data on student motivation were collected at the beginning of the spring term, in which the implementation was done. The posttest data on all the dependent variables were collected at the end of the spring term. The internet based Clifton StrengthsfinderTM (Gallup, 1998) developed by Donald O. Clifton was made use of so as to determine the talent themes of students involved in the study. The data on the motivation levels of students were obtained through the motivation scale, which was adapted from Attitude/Motivation Test Battery developed by Robert C. Gardner (1985). The data regarding the attendance percentages of students in English class were obtained from attendance sheets taken by the researcher weekly in both fall term and spring term. Students' exam scores in mid-term and final exams implemented by the researcher in both terms were taken into consideration in order to get information about the academic achievement of students involved in the study. The average reliability coefficient of Clifton strengthsfinder scale was 0.79. The reliability coefficient of motivation scale was 0.88 at the pretest and 0.91 at the posttest. As a result of the study, the most frequently encountered talent themes were restorative (16 students), responsibility (11 students), deliberative (9 students), ideation (9 students) and learner (9 students) respectively. Furthermore, the pretest and posttest average motivation scores of students were 69 out of 100 for the experimental group and 64 out of 100 for the control group. Also, SBA increased the attendance percentage of students significantly in favour of experimental group; however, it didn't have a significant effect on students' academic achievement and motivation levels. It is considered important to study SBA, which is a fairly new area of study for both the world and Turkey, in detail in various studies for decision makers, who want a more fruitful educational process in terms of finding a new alternative in education.