Mind Manipulation of Students Through Positive Thinking

Overview

Objectives/Goals This is a second year study on what effects student's performance. Last year I tested how greatly positive or negative thoughts affected student's grades. Students were told to read a list of positive or negative events before the test. If they got a negative event test they were told it was a very hard test and if they got a positive event test I told them it was an easy test. I found that students who took the positive event test got a higher score than students that took the negative event test. However, as a future teacher, I realized I will not have much control the positive or negative events that happen to students. So this year I wanted to test how greatly a teacher's positive attitude could influence student test scores without the positive or negative events. Methods/Materials I created a test of math, English and science questions for middle school students. 308 tests were administered. A blanket permission form signed by the teachers before the students were tested. During the positive test I said it was an easy test and that they would do well on it. During the control test I did not tell them it was easy but acted disinterested in the test and their performance. The students were given four minutes to complete the test and then the test was collected. Each test was scored. Results I averaged the scores for each test and compared them. The positive test received an 8.6% higher score than the control group, which could be the difference between passing or failing a class. This indicates that the teacher's influence is a very important factor in a student's performance. This also means that if you took a test worth 100 questions, just by the teacher's attitude, you could get 9 more questions correct, which is pretty cool if you think about it. Conclusions/Discussion There are many factors that influence a student's performance in school. Many of them are beyond a teacher's control such as a student's home life situation, lack of proper nutrition, amount of sleep etc. But inside the classroom a teacher can do small things that have great impact. This experiment showed that the positive attitude of a teacher increases student test scores. California is looking for ways to increase student test scores. Maybe it's not rocket science, but sometimes it's the simple things, a teacher that genuinely cares about his/her class that can make a huge difference in a student's performance.

Competition history

• CSEF 2006 Behavioral Sciences · Entry J0303

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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