19/07/13

Increasing retention/wellbeing 9-10am

Maximising Student Engagement 10am-1pm
Principal of a school 2-3.30pm
MAXIMISING STUDENT ENGAGEMENT:
A common problem no long term goals. Why am I here?
Year 9 most days absent and least connected with school.
Motivation:
Extrinsic (money, praise, status, external, rewards attached to a task, marks)
Intrinsic (in task)
- Reaching a student
- Solving a crossword
- Creating a work of art
- Resolving a key issue
- Helping a friend
In general
- Intrinsic is better (persistence learning, better conceptual understanding)
- There is usually a mix of the two
- Intrinsic motivation can be dampened by extrinsic motivators
Intrinsic motivation and needs
- Achievement/competence
- Autonomy
- Affiliation
- Power
- Stimulation
- Recognition
- Benevolence capacity to be able to offer something to someone else
- Fairness
Barriers to student motivation
- School
- Classroom
- Student
- Parents
- Peers
- System
Student role: Action poverty. Role has expanded to consume most of youth. What is the students
role within a classroom? Students have to see the links between what they are doing now and what
they will be doing in the future. Students must envisage future, see links, trust teachers and delay
gratification.
Barrier to motivation lack of choice, working together can be good
Flow you are so absorbed in something everything else fades away.
Very high challenge + very high skill = flow
Entity believe that intelligence is fixed at birth (performance). Seek affirmation and avoid negative
feedback. Self-handicap (if you stop practicing and get a bad mark then it doesnt matter). Lose
confidence, lack persistence and lower expectations.
Incremental believe that intelligence grows through learning (mastery orientation). How well a
student does tells them how they need to learn. Reflection on themselves. Set goals on increasing
their capacity rather than performing for others. Persist when things get tough and success is not
vital. I fail over and over and that is why I succeed.
Students must understand that they have to grow and develop their knowledge and work toward an
end result and understanding. Knowledge is not natural, it takes time and effort to advance skills.
You get it, you just havent gotten it yet
- Cater for diversity
- Foster connections
- Increase trust in students
- Link with students futures
- Link with tangible benefits
- Increase student choice within and outside of the classroom (chose ways to respond to an
assignment, chose who to work with, chose a role within a group, chose where to work,
chose a level to work, choice about order of activities)
- Increasing student voice
Student-led interviews
- Student prepares a portfolio
- Student talks parent through what they have achieved, strengths, weaknesses, goals for next
term/year/semester
- Parent can usually request an additional private interview if they wish
- Gives student responsibility with their education
- Gets parents more closely involved in the education of their children
How to address barriers:
- Provide feedback not praise
- Challenge students beliefs about own capacity to learn
- Make feedback and lessons relevant to their own lives/futures
- Provide students opportunity to teach others and contribute to others
- Provide opportunities for collaboration
- Provide clear and strong goals and structures in class
For activities which are essential but not engaging:
- Explain reasons and relevance
- Increase interest by goal setting and suspense activities (guessing etc.)
- May provide extrinsic motivation, but with the aim of withdrawing pull it away when
intrinsic motivation is achieved. (Deci and Ryan, 2000)
For low self-efficient students:
- Develop a plan
- Break tasks into small chunks scaffold and remove gradually
- Short term, specific goals
- Create an environment where failure is accepted
- Discuss your own failures
- Focus on feedback, not praise
What not to do:
- Inflexible instruction --- must allow student input!!
- Threats
- Competition can depress low self-efficient students
Rewards:
- Can interfere with learning/self-regulation
- Can be perceived as manipulative
- Unexpected and non-controlling OK --- difference between recognition of effort and reward
Brendan Murray PRINCIPAL OF A SCHOOL
Have a good plan which everyone follows
What is education?
Exclusion what if a student is posing a risk to other students? How would you tackle this?
Unconditional positive regard
Dont make telling off a personal attack. Let kids know you still like them, just they cant do
something
What impacts most on student achievement.
- Expectations
- Need to have trust in teacher
- Kids believe in themselves
- Empathy, encouragement
- Behavioural instruction