By Liz Hall
Coaching can help students with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) improve their study skills, well-being and confidence levels, suggests research carried out by the Edge Foundation.
Some 127 students from eight universities and two community colleges in the US took part in the study by researchers at Wayne State University. It is the largest study to date to examine the effects of ADHD coaching. The study by Sharon Field, David Parker, Shlomo Sawilowsky and Laura Rolands suggests that coaching helps students improve their self-regulation, study skills and will. It also helps to build students’ confidence and enhance their organisational and time management skills, suggests the study. Participation in Edge coaching services resulted in improvement in students’ approach to learning. It also enhanced their sense of well-being and resulted in more positive emotional states, which have been linked by research (Fredrickson & Branigan, 2005) to more effective learning, say the researchers.
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has long been associated with poor grades, poor reading and maths test scores, and being held back. But despite billions of dollars spent on special education programmes in the US, hordes of ADHD students drop out of further education. According to the Edge Foundation, high school students with ADHD are four times more likely to drop out of school than the general population. Some 35% of ADHD students won’t graduate at all from school while those who stay in school will suffer from lack of confidence, higher risk of substance abuse and menial grades (on average a C- or D+). Only 22% of students with ADHD enter college while only 5% will graduate.
Students with ADHD are vulnerable because the disorder impacts the portion of the brain that regulates “executive functioning”, meaning they have deficits in attention, planning and organization, prioritization, impulse control, memory, time management, and higher-order conceptual thinking. High executive functions are linked to academic success.
Those ADHD students who participated in Edge coaching sessions demonstrated statistically significant, higher executive functioning than ADHD students who did not receive coaching so were more likely to succeed academically, according to the study.
“The magnitude of the effect size for self regulation was more than double the typical educational intervention, and executive functioning was quadruple. Findings with effect sizes that large are rare.”
Students who received Edge coaching showed substantial gains in their overall approach to learning. They were better able to organize, direct and manage cognitive activities, emotional responses and overt behaviours. They were also more able to formulate goals more realistically and consistently work toward achieving them, manage their time more effectively, and stick with tasks even when they found them challenging.
The coaching in the study targeted eight central areas of students’ lives: scheduling, goal setting, confidence building, organizing, focusing, prioritizing, and persisting at tasks. Students engaged in weekly 30-minute phone calls with their coaches – in some cases, in person or via Skype when available – in addition to e-mail and text check-ins when needed. They had no more than two weeks off of the programme during the study.
Students took the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI) test, which measures learning strategies and related skills, before and after the coaching program. Those in the coaching program gained more than 180 points on the second try, while the comparison group’s gains were much more modest. Coached students especially made strides in the area of “self-regulation,” which measures time-management and concentration.
See the full report, Quantifying the Effectiveness of Coaching for College Students with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, here.