Marian Magazine - Marian High School

Marian Research StudyOffers Validation andPowerful DiscoveriesNearly everyone associatedwith Marian believes that it isan environment that empowersgirls to succeed as confident,independent, thinking leaders,but that was not enoughfor Head of School SusanToohey. She wanted proof todemonstrate that this was notjust something the Mariancommunity believed to betrue, but that it was, in fact,completely true.She enlisted the help of GinnyCurley, Ph.D. ‘86, assistantprofessor at Nebraska MethodistCollege, and Karen Lisko, Ph.D.,president of Motivatics, to provethat Marian’s claim was factual.What they found not onlyproved the claim but revealed somuch more about the educationyoung girls receive at Marian.Laura Bast ‘10 and Kathleen Borghoff ‘10Capturing andevaluating the dataIn the spring of 2010, students weresurveyed regarding their Marian experience.The surveys were both quantitative andqualitative. In addition, select students wereasked to use a camera to record incidents inthe classroom when they felt engaged anddocument why they felt engaged at thoseparticular moments. All of that data was thentaken to Bellevue University for analysis.The survey results were compared to anational study, High School Survey of StudentEngagement, that was completed in 2009.In that study, 80 percent of students agreedor strongly agreed that they felt good abouttheir high school experience. Marian was at90.6 percent.Marian students also responded higher thanthe national average when asked if they caredabout their school and if they believed thereis at least one adult at the school who caresabout them. Armed with the knowledgethat there is a direct link between GPA andstudents who feel cared about and investedin their school, the research team was ableto deduce that the key factor to developingsuccessful students is student engagement.Mary Strom Hawkins, Ph.D. ’69, presidentof Bellevue University, explained that theresearch revealed when the learner hasgreater control, the learning becomes amore intense, engaging experience. Thisengagement in the classroom is whatultimately drives students to deeper learningand increases confidence, independence, andthe ability to think for themselves.13