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...Enablers--each subscales. Results also indicated that scores from the ACES-College are moderately correlated with students' current and cumulative grade point averages. Directions for future research and implications for practice are discussed.
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Students attending postsecondary institutions frequently identify a need for support services related to academic difficulty (Bishop, Bauer, & Becker, 1998; Jennings, 1996). Because a variety of psychosocial (e.g., depression, anxiety, adjustment) and academically related (e.g., critical thinking, study strategies, motivation) factors can influence academic performance, one of the primary challenges facing practitioners is determining the cause of a student's academic difficulty. Although self-report measures have been developed for assessing social and affective problems that can influence academic achievement (e.g., Beck Depression Inventory [Beck, Steer, & Brown, 1996]; Multidimensional Anxiety Questionnaire [Reynolds, 1999]), few self-report instruments that assess academic skills and related behaviors have been developed for the college student population. The purpose of the current study was to explore structural and concurrent validity evidence for the Academic Competence Evaluation Scales College Edition (ACES-College; DiPerna & Elliott, 2001), a self-report measure designed to assess a student's self-perception of his or her academically relevant skills and behaviors.
Model of Academic Competence
An examination of the empirical literature indicates that researchers have been inconsistent in defining the term academic competence and that many use it interchangeably with terms such as academic performance and academic ability (e.g., Henggeler, Cohen, Edwards, Summerville, & Ray, 1991; Rotheram, 1987). For the development of ACES-College, academic competence was defined as a multidimensional construct composed of the skills, attitudes, and behaviors of a learner that contribute to academic success. This working definition was based on an analysis of related research exploring student factors that contribute to academic success (e.g., Greenwood, 1996; Wang, Haertel, & Walberg, 1993; Wentzel, 1993).
Recent research that has explored the construct of academic competence for elementary and secondary students has found that the skills, attitudes, and behaviors contributing to academic competence fail into one of two domains: academic skills or academic enablers (DiPerna & Elliott, 1999, 2000). Academic skills are the basic and complex skills that are a central focus of academic curricula in K--12 schools; these skills are necessary for students to learn content knowledge at the postsecondary level. Academic enablers are attitudes and behaviors that allow a student to function in academic environments and benefit from instruction.
Each of these two broad domains includes multiple types of related skills. The academic skills domain is hypothesized to include skills in language (reading and writing), mathematics and scientific inquiry, and critical thinking. The academic enablers domain is hypothesized to include interpersonal skills, motivation, study skills, and engagement. Interpersonal skills are cooperative learning behaviors that allow students to interact effectively in academic settings. Motivation reflects a student's approach, persistence, and level of interest regarding learning academic skills or content knowledge. Study skills are behaviors or strategies that facilitate the processing of new material, and engagement reflects student behaviors that represent attentive, active participation in classroom settings. Although previous studies (DiPerna & Elliott, 1999, 2000) have directly examined the relationships between the academic enablers measured by the ACES (K-12 version) and academic skills, one of the purposes of the current study was to explore the relationships of enablers with indicators of academic achievement at the postsecondary level.
Rationale
Many practitioners who work with college students who are experiencing academic...
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