Investigating the Effects of Hope training on cognitive engagement and Academic Achievement of Exceptional Girl Students (mental retardation) of Khoramaabad Second Level of Middle School

Factors such as frustration toward continuing education, lack of self-confidence, lack of making efforts to compensate for failures, and lack of insistence on achieving success are thought to affect academic achievement. Therefore, this study aims at investigating the impact of teaching hope, as a construct in positive psychology upon the cognitive engagement and academic achievement among high school exceptional female students (with intellectual disability) in Khorramabad, Iran.
This is a two group pretest-post quasi-experimental study. The study population consisted of all exceptional high school female students in Khorramabad in the school year of 2014-2015. The research sample consisted of 30 Exceptional high school female students. The participants were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups in equal numbers. The research instrument was Smart Cognitive engagement Questionnaire (2012). The questionnaire, adopted from the theoretical model of Linen Brink and Pintrich (2003), measures aspects of cognitive engagement through 19 statements. The reliability of the tool was 0.88 in this study. To measure the academic achievement of the students, the students’ final GP of the second semester was used. After selecting the test group as well as the control group, in the same conditions and simultaneously and before any intervention, each questionnaire of cognitive learning questionnaires was read out for the students of the groups to complete the questionnaire as a pre-test. The experiment groups received 9 sessions 60 minute hope training in accordance with Snyder's Hope Theory and Magyar Moe’s positive psychology. The instruction was carried out in an operational and illustrative manner in forms of presentation, stories and of PowerPoint files. The control group did not receive any training. Afterwards, post-tests were administered to the students of both groups.. Descriptive statistics indices (mean and standard deviation) were used for describing the data. Multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA) and Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) were used to test the research hypotheses.
The results of multivariate and single-variable covariance analysis showed that, by controlling the pre-test scores, there was a significant difference between the average scores of the cognitive engagement and academic achievement variables in the experimental and control groups in the post-test phase( (p Based on the results of this study, the positive and significant effects of teaching was thoroughly vivid. Hence educational affairs authorities should seek to apply and promote educational practices that increase the ability to progress and awaken hope among the students with intellectual disabilities and prepare them to face classroom challenges. This practice gradually resulted in improving the students’ academic skills, cognitive engagement and ultimately academic achievement.