Disorganisation and the secondary school student: assessing a commonly mentioned but rarely examined factor affecting school performance

[Truncated abstract] Organisation is a key factor for students successful everyday adaptive functioning in schools. Although it is widely recognised that the school system requires students to be organised, particularly at the secondary school level, and that students who are disorganised will be seriously disadvantaged academically if they do not learn how to be better organised, there is only a very limited body of research that has investigated organisation and/or disorganisation in the mainstream student population. A limiting factor for this to date has been the lack of instruments available for measuring this construct. This thesis comprises four separate studies that encompass the development of a new instrument to measure disorganisation among secondary school-aged students. This instrument is utilised to test the hypotheses that male students are more disorganised that female students, and that low achieving students are more disorganised than average and high achieving students. It is also used in an exploratory study to investigate a possible relationship between disorganisation and poor visual-spatial skills. Furthermore, the instrument is utilised in conjunction with semi-structured interviews to develop six case studies portraying the thinking and behaviours of secondary school-aged students who are disorganised.