Students not receiving the support for learning which they need is one problem, another is that, even when provided, the support may not be adequate or effective enough. This raises the question about what adequate and effective support might be.

In relation to adequacy, there are two different views on what is considered adequate support. One is based on the idea that the support should be tailored for the individual student’s specific needs, while the other assumes that the learning activities and the learning environment should be adjusted, in order to include the diversity among students. These two views are reflected in previous findings (Jönsson, 2018), which suggest that the support provided to low-achieving students could be characterized as either “Supportive and relational”, “Simplifying”, or “General and practical”.

These different support approaches have a close relationship to the concepts “scaffolding” and “simplifying”. Scaffolding means that students receive increased support when needed, but that this is gradually decreased (“faded”) when students no longer need it (Van de Pol, Volman, & Beishuizen, 2010). Examples of such supportive and relational support include communicating expectations, helping students to structure their work, giving feedback, and building relationships. With the exception of building relationships, this support is thus characterized by being subject-specific and integrated in the ongoing classroom work, where low-achieving students are doing the same assignments as the other students, but with more support.  A simplifying approach correlates with what Harrison et al. (2013) would categorize as “modifications”, which are “changes to practices in schools that alter, lower, or reduce expectations to compensate for a disability” (p. 556). What the teachers do, is to reduce the difficulty and complexity of assignments and teaching materials, so that the low-achieving students may focus on less demanding tasks, such as memorizing facts or basic skills training. According to previous research (Andreasson, 2007; Isaksson, 2009; SNAE, 2003), basic skills training seems to be one of the most common support actions in Swedish schools.

Self-determination theory (SDT) is of interest in relation to support because it focuses on the social-contextual conditions that may enhance or undermine students’ motivation (Ryan & Deci, 2000). In turn, it is important to consider, that for support to have an effect, students must accept and be willing to use that support. SDT suggests that learning environments supporting general needs such as autonomy, competence, and relatedness will positively affect students’ motivation. Providing positive or negative feedback may affect students’´ motivation and to what extent they engage in learning. In this regard, SDT is similar to self-efficacy, since students rely on their self-efficacy to determine their course of action with academic tasks (see e.g., Keller Carman, 2015).

If viewing the “Supportive and relational” approach to support from an SDT perspective, there is considerable agreement. The scaffolding provided by the teachers supports students’ perceptions of autonomy and competence, and the approach also includes a relational dimension. Although providing an easier version of the assignment may be seen as a way to support student competence, the simplifying approach may for several reasons not be successful in increasing students’ intrinsic motivation (Keller Carman, 2015).

Purpose

The current study aimed to further our understanding of the adequacy of supplemental support to low-achieving students, by investigating students’ perceptions of support in Swedish compulsory school. Two questions were investigated: What kind of support do students perceive that they receive? Do students who differ regarded to gender, achievement level, and family educational background, experience different kinds of support?

The subjects were 1,731 ninth-grade students born in 2003, who left compulsory school in 2018 (age 15-16). This is a sample from the whole population (N = 5,203) of ninth graders in a large city in Sweden. Full information is available for subject grades, national test results, gender, family educational background, and questionnaire data. Students from 79 different schools are included in the analyses. The questionnaire included items measuring students’ attitudes towards school and learning, learning difficulties, and different types of support. In 9th Grade, teachers grade their students in each subject on a scale with six steps, from fail (F) and pass (E) to pass with special distinction (A). Since the grades are used for selection purposes, they are converted into numbers from 0 (F) to 20 (A). Teachers’ grading therefore result in a sum with values ranging from 0 to 320 (i.e., the “merit value”). This merit value is on a continuous and equidistant scale and was used to create a measure of low- and high-achievement. In order to investigate the associations between low-achieving students’ self-reported attitudes to school and schoolwork, learning difficulties, and different types of support, one- and two-level confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modelling (SEM) were used. First, five separate measurement models were estimated, where a latent variable was created designed to reflect attitudes towards school and schoolwork (AttSc), learning difficulties (LDiff), scaffolding support (ScSup), simplifying support (SiSup), and relational support (ReSup). As measures of model fit, the χ2 goodness-of-fit test and Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA), the Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR), and the CFI goodness-of-fit measure were used (Jöreskog, 1993; Bentler, 1990). However, while the model fit is of fundamental importance, it should also be stressed that a model should be meaningful and the parameters interpretable. Missing information in the variables was handled by using the missing data modelling in the Mplus program (Muthén, Kaplan & Hollis, 1987). To take account of possible clustering of students in schools (school level), the complex option offered by the Mplus program was used. The analyses were conducted in the SPSS program, version 24 (2016) and in the Mplus program, version 8 (Muthén & Muthén, 1998-2019).

The aim of this study was to further increase our understanding of the adequacy of supplemental support to low-achieving students, by investigating students’ perceptions of support in Swedish compulsory school. The findings from this study suggest that low-achieving students do receive support, although they mostly receive simplifying support. This association was significant, even when taking gender and educational background into account. Findings also show that low-achieving students, to a lesser extent as compared to high-achieving students, think that the teacher likes them and that they should trust the teacher in important matters. These findings indicate, first, that the support provided to low-achieving students mainly involves the lowering of expectations and limiting of students’ opportunities to learn, and then, secondly, that the support lacks a balance in relation to the dimensions specified by SDT, both of which may have negative consequences for students’ learning and motivation. There are significant associations between low-achievers and attitudes to school, learning difficulties, scaffolding and simplifying support. When taking the background variables into account, there are still associations between low-achieving students and their attitudes to school and schoolwork, and perceived learning difficulties. The result showed that attitudes to school and learning difficulties are two factors that have variance only on an individual level. The three support variables had variation on the school level, which means that schools differ in relation to the type of support students report that they receive. The study is a part of the research project “Knowledge in a criteria-based grading system: An evaluation of the Swedish reforms 1994 and 2011” (2013-2270), and the project “Student self-concept and school achievement: bidirectional relations and effects of social comparisons and grading” (2019-04531), both funded by the Swedish Research Council.

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