There is growing concern over the academic performance of college athletes with limited emphasis of academic requirement in Korea. Several strategies are adopted to provide academic support to promote academic success of student athletes. As one of the strategies, peer tutoring uses pairings of high-performing students to tutor lower-performing student athletes in a class-wide setting. Although benefits of peer tutoring (i.e., academic achievement) were reported, limited research explored relationship between student athletes’ social relationship (i.e., social network) and their academic performance. Purpose of this study was to investigate the association between involvement in peer tutoring and student athletes' academic achievement and their social networks. Research questions were: (1) What are the network structure of physical education (PE) major students where student athletes are embedded, (2) What structural parameters are contributing to the PE majors network structure, and (3) Is there an association between student athletes' academic achievement and geodesic distance to the peer tutors shown in their network?
Method:
Ninety-five freshmen and sophomore college students (M= 78, F=17) majoring PE participated in this study. Forty-four were student athletes and were provided peer tutoring opportunities. Among the rest of participants, nine students volunteered as a tutor of the student athletes to help prepare for class works throughout a semester. The student athletes met assigned tutors as they needed. Data were collected using Name Generator Questionnaire (i.e., list four names that you think they are your best friend in the PE department) at the end of the semester. Students' grade point average (GPA) was also collected to analyze academic achievement. Data were analyzed using social network analysis tools such as UCINET, p-net, and Quadratic Assignment Procedure. Network distance was calculated if association between geodesic distance and academic achievement exist.
Analysis/Results:
Results showed that (1) PE students showed three families under one roof where homophily was identified (2) homophily (e.g., student athletes, students with same sex) contributed to the total social network of PE majors, and (3) student athletes who had reciprocal interactions more with tutors showed improvement in their GPA than other student athletes. Their GPA change is not attributed to the geodesic distance to tutors.
Conclusions:
This study concludes that student athletes’ reciprocal interactions with peers result in positive influence on their educational achievement. Creating reciprocal friendship between student athletes and non-athletes students should be encouraged to improve academic support service and academic performance of student athletes.