Effects on Individually Tailored Teaching According to Types of Under-achievement in Science

Abstract

Response to Intervention (RTI), which is focused on the gap between pre-interventions and post-interventions, provides an effective intervention program. This study takes under-achievement factors into consideration to determine the overall characteristics of underachievers. The under-achievement factors include cognitive learning factors, affective factors, and environmental factors. This study conducted curriculum-based assessments, achievement tests, and assessments on attitudes toward science and science learning motivation to verify the effects of individually tailored teaching according to the types of under-achievement in science. The experimental group was composed of six students in fourth grade, and the comparison group had 23 students. The findings of the study were as follows. First, the performance and progress of underachievers in the first-stage showed little progress and did not reach grade-level performance. Second, the underachievers in the second-stage greatly improved. In particular, the average of eight sessions in the second-step demonstrated performance beyond that of the regular child. Third, individually tailored teaching according to the types of under-achievement in science positively affected attitudes toward science and science learning motivation. This study will contribute to the improvement of the underachiever by applying individually tailored teaching according to the types of under-achievement in science.