mponents, behavioral management components, and/or academic skill enhancement strategies (Raebeck, 1993).
Determining the effects of Saturday Detention in relation to traditional discipline methods such as suspension is not only important as a means of determining whether it operates to decrease student misbehavior. It is important because there is the possibility that Saturday Detention also achieves several desirable goals, two of which are that it builds students' character and other intangible prosocial traits, and helps them to improve their academic standing.
The foregoing claim is based on even very early research into Saturday detention programs. For example, Gooding and Fitsko (1978) reported that preliminary studies of Saturday Detention programs indicated that they may be a good alternative to student suspension because of the effects of these programs and on grades and their potential for solving many of the problems involved with suspending students from school. As the authors put it:
Allowing students to attend Saturday school rather than being suspended gives them an opportunity to improve their grades and to attend all their regular classes. It avoids the stigma of absence from school and does not reward those skipping school with the opportunity to miss more classes. (p. iii)
With studies and claims such as the foregoing, research began to follow two avenues: (1) more investigatory attention was focused on examining for the general effectiveness of suspension to determine whether or not it achieved the objectives claimed for it; and (2) attempts were made to develop, implement, and evaluate Saturday detention programs to determine whether they might be a viable alternative to suspension. As research continued, it was the findings of the first category of research that spurred ongoing work in the second category. This first category of research is reviewed below.
Research on the General Effec...