The
longer I am in education the more convinced I am
that the most important outcome of education is fostering
in students the same innate curiosity they brought to school
as preschoolers.
Unfortunately,
too often the outcome of education gets reduced to scores on tests like ERB,
SSAT, SAT, ACT, AP. (I was talking with a educator from Britain earlier
this week who said he liked teaching in here in the U.S. but was getting frustrated
with government influence in education. Move to independent
schools I told him.)
In
a previous article summary post, I mentioned that kids
become disengaged from school as early as 3d grade.
The
article summary below provides research on effective teaching techniques
that foster engagement in high school students.
As I read
the article I thought both of the ways I had (and
hadn't) engaged my students in the classroom and which
teachers I best connected with when I was a student
and why.
We
in education often try to complicate good teaching
with fancy terms, etc., yet to me good teaching
is always more about getting to know students as
"real people" and just as importantly having them know you as a
real person with interests, dislikes, etc.
Enjoy
the weekend!
Joe
----------
Eliciting
Engagement in the High School Classroom
Student
engagement (versus boredom) is a key correlate of success in high school, and
some teachers are much more successful at engaging their students than others.
The
research so far haven’t given us a clear idea of how to increase engagement
across a school.
There
are three types of student engagement:
- Behavioral: the extent to which a student listens, does
assignments, follows directions, participates
- Cognitive: the extent to which a student applies mental
energy, thinks about the content, tries to figure out new material, and
grapples with mental challenges
- Emotional: the extent to which a student enjoys a
class, feels comfortable and interested, and wants to do well.
These
three dimensions interact in a synergistic way, but the emotional dimension may
be the most important, driving the other two.
This
is because it’s all tied up with adolescents’ identity development – the
process of integrating successes, failures, routines, habits, rituals,
novelties, thrills, threats, violations, gratifications, frustrations into a
coherent and evolving interpretation of who we are.
Identity
development could be an underlying mechanism by which adolescents
subconsciously make meaning of classroom experiences and then engage or
disengage accordingly.
Three
classroom approaches seem to work best to get students engaged:
Connective
instruction: Making personal connections to
the subject matter through six teaching practices: helping students see the
relevance of academic content to their lives, cultures, and futures; conveying
caring for students at an academic, social, and personal level; demonstrating
understanding of students; providing affirmation through praise, written
feedback, and opportunities for success; using humor; and enabling
self-expression by having students share ideas, opinions, and values with
others.
Academic
rigor: Emphasizing the academics of a class via three
teaching practices: providing challenging work; “academic press” (emphasis on
hard work and academic success); and conveying passion for the content.
Lively
teaching: Replacing tedious lectures and low-involvement videos
with three perkier teaching practices: using games and fun activities (such as
academic Jeopardy and Family Feud); having students work in cooperative groups;
and assigning hands-on projects.
Connective
instruction practices were seven times more effective at fostering student
engagement than academic rigor and lively teaching, with lively teaching by
itself coming in last. The key is tapping into students’ identity development.
Through emphasizing relational connections between students and their teachers,
content, and learning experiences connective instruction practices appear to
draw on students’ sense of self as a mechanism for engagement.
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