Keeping Students Engaged: A Challenge for Schools

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Keeping Students EngagedA Challenge for Schools
Annie Gowing Manager Student Wellbeing and
School Support Services Southern Metropolitan
Region Department of Education Victoria
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Focus on

• Concepts of engagement and connectedness
• Why does it matter?
• What can schools do?

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Students relationships with school

• Conceptualised in different ways
• - affiliation, attachment, bonding, commitment,
  participation, connectedness, engagement ..
• Dropout literature (Finn)
• Shift in focus from individual to school
• New ways of understanding the relationship
  continue to emerge

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Engagement 3 Components

• Behavioural
• doing
• Emotional
• - feeling
• Cognitive
• - thinking
• (Finn Rock, 1997 Birch Ladd, 1997)

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Indicators of Engagement

• School attendance
• Enjoyment of school
• Sense of connectedness
• Participation in school activities
• Learning goals
• Self-efficacy for learning
• Expectation of success
• Attentiveness
• Learning practices (e.g. time spend reading,
  interest in and valuing reading)
• (Woolley and Bowen, 2007)

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School Connectedness
Feeling close to school and the school
environment (McNeely, Nonnemaker and Blum,
2002) Feeling a positive connection to teachers
and schools (Murray and Greenberg,
2000) describes a healthy, protective
relationship between youth and the environments
in which they grow up (Whitlock, 2006)
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Factors Associated with Higher School
Connectedness

• Feeling encouraged by teachers was a common
  theme for students to have a sense of school
  connectedness (Fuller, 1998)
• Smaller enrolment, fair discipline policies,
  caring teaching, high expectations and
  opportunities for meaningful participation
  (Christenson et al. 2001)
• Positive classroom management climates,
  participation in extracurricular activities,
  tolerant disciplinary policies, small school size
  (McNeely et al. 2002)
• Well managed classrooms and ample opportunities
  to participate in extracurricular activities
  (Bowman, 2002)

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School Factors Associated with Decreasing
Connectedness

• authoritarian behaviour by teachers and in some
  cases other students (Fuller, 1998)
• school connectedness is lower in schools that
  suspend students for relatively minor infractions
  (Bowman, 2002)
• youth involved in no activity had the lowest
  rates for measures of school connectedness and
  the highest rates for emotional distress and
  suicidal behaviour (Harrison and Gopalakrishnan,
  2003)

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Why does engagement matter?

• Research shows that school engagement is
  consistently predictive of academic achievement
  (Cook, Murphy Hunt, 2000)
• Success or failure in school has a profound and
  lifelong influence on young people
• School failure and early school leaving can lead
  to a cascade of poor outcomes (lowered lifelong
  income, greater risk for substance abuse,
  increased likelihood of relationship
  dissatisfaction, increased risk of engagement in
  antisocial activities)
• (Woolley and Bowen, 2007)

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Why Connectedness Matters

• Smoked less
• Drank alcohol less
• Had a later age of sexual debut
• Attempted suicide less often
• Did better across every academic measure
• (Blum, 2006)

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a causal relationship

• There is something in that bond, in that
  connection to school that changes the life
  trajectory at least the health and academic
  behaviour. It is very powerful second only to
  parents in power. In some contexts its more
  powerful than parents.
• (Blum, 2006)

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Schools can make a difference
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(No Transcript)
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School business across domains

• Academic
• Social
• Emotional
• Psychological
• Physical
• Spiritual

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School factors influencing engagement

• In the classroom key factors are
• Teacher-student relationships
• Pedagogy
• Classroom climate (norms of behaviour,
  achievement goals, expectations of success)

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At the school level

• School leadership
• Teacher learning
• The school culture (values and goals)
• Parent involvement
• Organizing schools for learning (broad
  curriculum, choice and flexibility, student
  input, meaningful learning etc.)

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Students like to be taught by teachers who

• Enjoy teaching students as well as the subject
• Respect students and dont put them down
• Involve them in making decisions
• Care about them
• Listen to them and dont shout at them
• Are fair, approachable and supportive

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Teachers who .

• Know them as individuals and speak to them
  individually
• Have fun with them
• Explain things clearly
• Respond to requests for help
• Dont give up on them
• Have expectations of them

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Engagement in learning declines when

• Students
• - experience fear, family problems etc.
• - feel the need to protect their sense of
  self-worth against the threat of failure
• - have a very high anxiety level
• - believe that success is attributable to
  ability, that ability is fixed, effort is futile

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When Teachers

• Make public comparisons between students work
• Put students or classes down
• Are not engaged in teaching, do not like young
  people and/or are burnt out
• Give work to students that is repetitive,
  unchallenging and unrelated to the real world

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When Schools

• Are seen by students to value the highly
  successful students only
• Make and implement rules, policies and structures
  that are rigid and inflexible
• Stress competition and performance-oriented goals

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Highly connected young people

• liked their teachers
• Believed their teachers cared if they enjoyed and
  passed their subjects
• Had got to know a teacher well
• Would be able to find an adult to talk to if
  upset at school
• Wagged school less

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Young people with low connectedness

• Fragile links to teachers
• Wag more often
• Enjoy subjects less
• Low enjoyment in belonging to the school
  community
• Fewer school supports
• Poor health status

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Some final thoughts

• One of the most consistent findings in the
  literature is that positive, supportive
  relationships with adults are associated with
  good outcomes for children
• For many students, relationships with school
  staff are among the most salient and influential
  relationships in their lives
• Closer, higher quality relationships are
  associated with improved engagement in school

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Some challenges

• Engaging vs engagement
• Disengaging vs disengagement
• Early intervention and prevention
• Individual vs school
• Socioeconomic/sociocultural barriers to
  participation
• Questions of equity
• Meaningful opportunities for all students
• Frame effective risk reduction and protection
  enhancing interventions