Undergraduate students' resistance to study skills course

College Student Journal, March, 2006 by Sedat Yuksel

Research indicate that students generally fail to benefit from study skills courses and show resistance to this course in higher education level. The purpose of this research is to investigate reasons why students show resistance to the course of study skills and habits. In this research, a qualitative design utilizing retrospective interviews was employed. Students who showed resistance to the course of study skills and habits were interviewed. The results of this research indicated that reasons of students showed to resistance behavior are: do not want to change their study habits, can not change their study skills, believe the new study skills meaningless, and perceive that teaching study skills to the students in schools is not the responsibility of their career. It was proposed that the instructors of this course should have opportunities to practice these study skills instead of giving students theoretical knowledge.

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Educational research and development efforts largely relate to the development of instruction. In these efforts, teachers are seen as the most important element of instruction. But, learning occurs inside to the student's head. The teacher is a person who provides convenient conditions for students' learning. However, learning is the responsibility of the students.

Students must use study skills which are convenient to be successful. Students generally use some study skills developed by students during their education from elementary to higher education level. These study skills are generally inefficient and inappropriate to the student. For this reason, study skills which inappropriate to the student are needed to be taught to the students. If these skills aren't taught students as planned, they can't learn to use these skills (Gall, Gall, Jacobsen & Bullock, 1990).

Higher education institutes provide supplement services for students to develop their study skills. These institutes implement courses and programs on study skills. Because students generally are incompetent and unprepared for standards at higher education, higher education institutes offer supplement services and programs (Weinstein, 1988). Those services and programs generally consist of these models: (1) learning -to- learn courses, (2) supplemental instruction, (3) required programs for unprepared students, (4) courses integrating the processes of reading and writing, and (5) learning assistance centers (Simpson, Hyndt, Mist & Burrell, 1997). Uludag University (UU) Department of Guidance and Counseling (DGC), where this research was conducted, give a course named "Study Skills and Habits" to only this department's students at university. In this viewpoint, this service seems to be appropriate to the model of supplemental instruction. This course is compulsory for all of DGC students and it aims to prepare the students to be better counselors in the future. Briefly, students get both academic assistance on study skills and also knowledge and skills to use in their careers. For this reason, the course of "Study Skills and Habits" is considered a different model than program models.

There are number of researches on the effectiveness of services and programs. These researches, generally investigated the effectiveness of these programs, according to student's cumulative grade-point averages. Finally, researches found that all programs generally positively affect the students (see for detailed information on these researches Bednar & Weinberg, 1970; Kirschenbaum & Perri, 1982; Simpson, Hyndt, Mist & Burrell, 1997). But they interpreted that these programs are effective only according to student's cumulative grade-point averages. A few researches found in-depth information about these programs. For example, the students, especially low ability students don't readily receive these services (Friedlander, 1980; Karabenich & Knapp, 1988), and students resist these services when they get them and they do not change their study skills and habits (Dembo & Seli, 2004). It is interesting that students show resistance to this course which would benefit them.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the undergraduate students' resistance to the course of "study skills and habits". The concept of "student resistance" is especially used in education and sociology literatures. Resistance theorists have made respectable contributions to the invention and development of this concept (see for more information: Anyon, 1980; Apple, 1982; Giroux, 1981a, 1981b, 1983a, 1983b; Mac Leod, 1995; Willis, 1977). Resistance theorists start with the ideas of the social reproduction theory that states that schools reproduce the social divisions. According to resistance theory, students show behaviors that denote various creative reactions against the school's hegemonic practices. Resistance theorists state that there is conflict and antagonism in schools and they draw attention to the contestation and resistance behavior of students. Student resistance refers to student's behavior that reflects the conflict to deviate from the presented knowledge and practices. But any deviant behavior is not an example of resistance. Resistance behavior is intended and planned deviant behavior. For a behavior to be resistance, the behavior consciously must be intended and planned. Deviant behaviors generally are not intended or planned and they occur suddenly (Erickson, 1984; McFarland, 2004). Students' main purpose is generally to sabotage the lesson, to make teacher nervous, and to cause the teacher's lack of control in class. Research on student's resistance show that students' resistance is caused by reasons such as physical characteristics of school and classroom, peer relations, group to which student belongs, student's parental problems, student's self-concept, the difficulty of subject-matter, and personal dislike of teacher(Alpert, 1991; Brookfield, 1990; Cusick, 1992; Garber, 2002; McFadden, 1995; McFarland, 2001; Pauly, 1991). Briefly, either successful or unsuccessful students show resistance.