Student Engagement and School Community Links

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Student Engagement and School Community Links

• Peter Sullivan
• Monash University

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Overview

• Challenges facing educators
• A theoretical perspective
• Some implications generally
• Implications for community partnerships

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A disclaimer

• I had originally intended to be more explicit
  about what I say means for School Community
  links, but there is not much. I am leaving to you
  the interpretation for your own context.

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The challenges educators are facing
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Especially in the middle years

• A decline in school engagement of young
  adolescents as compared with their engagement in
  primary school.
• Increased truancy.
• Greater incidence of disruptive behaviour,
  alienation and isolation.
• The alienation appears to be most acute in the
  case of disadvantaged students.
• Note the Prime Ministers concerns about bullying

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PISA has some things to say

• In 2003, Australia was one of 41 countries that
  participated in the Programme for International
  Student Assessment (PISA).
• Over 12 500 15 year old students, from all
  schools systems, and from each state and
  territory, completed a two-hour pen and paper
  tests in their schools, and answered a 30 minute
  questionnaire.
• The focus of the assessment was on how well young
  people had been prepared to meet challenges, how
  well they could adapt their learning to the needs
  of their lives, and to address aspects of school
  organisation, including factors contributing to
  disadvantage.

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In the Australian results

• Australia is characterised as high in quality but
  low in equity
• There was a strong relationship between
  achievement and socioeconomic background
• Some schools were more effective than others in
  moderating this effect.
• Students in metropolitan areas performed better
  than regional students, who, in turn outperformed
  rural students.
• Indigenous students were over-represented in the
  lower categories of proficiency.

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Two complementary challenges

• We need to educate the next generation of
  inventors, creators, thinkers, advocates, and
  explorers who will find ways to build a peaceful
  caring society, tackle major problems (e.g.,
  energy), innovate, entertain, and find ways to
  build sustainable societies.
• Given demographic imbalances, the most effective
  way to ensure that there are working people with
  the right skills, is to improve the effectiveness
  of the education of all students, especially
  those who are currently underperforming

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In both cases we need to challenge students
(appropriately)
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A different take on ZPD

• Vygotskys (1978) zone of proximal development
  (ZPD) distance between the actual
  developmental level as determined by independent
  problem solving and the level of potential
  development as determined by problem solving
  under adult guidance or in collaboration with
  more capable peers (p. 86).
• ZPD defines learning as going beyond tasks or
  problems that students can solve independently,
  so that the students are working on challenges
  for which they need support.

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The complexity of challenge

• Unless the students are challenged they are not
  learning and growing
• But what if students resist challenge by giving
  up, thereby prompting the teacher to reduce the
  challenge by feeding in information

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This resistance has been widely noted

• Pupils misbehave during tasks involving higher
  order processes
• Pupils work effectively on tasks requiring only
  recall of information (Doyle, 1986)
• Pupils are not interested in each others
  opinions
• The more unfamiliar the task, the more difficult
  it is to teach (Desforges Cockburn, 1987)

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A particular theory - Dweck
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Perspectives on intelligence

• entity
• people who believe that their intelligence is
  genetically predetermined and remains fixed
  through life.
• Dweck suggested that students who believe in the
  entity view require easy successes to maintain
  motivation, and see challenges as threats.
• incremental
• can change their intelligence and/or achievement
  by manipulating factors over which they have some
  control.
• Students with such incremental beliefs often
  choose to sacrifice opportunities to look smart
  in favour of learning something new.

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The theory Dweck

• Seekers of affirmation (performers), when
  experiencing difficulties
• lose confidence in themselves,
• tend to denigrate their own intelligence,
• exhibit plunging expectations,
• develop negative approaches,
• have lower persistence.
• seek positive judgements from others and avoid
  negative ones.

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• Achievers for its own sake (mastery)
• do not blame others for threats
• do not see failure as an indictment on themselves
• hold learning goals which are to increase their
  competence when confronted with difficulty
• do not see success as essential

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Aspirations and Expectations

• Potentially positive influences include the
  extent to which students connect current
  schooling with future opportunities or their
  possible selves, which is the future-oriented
  component of self-concept (Oyserman, Terry,
  Bybee, 2002, p. 313)

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A research study

• With year 8 students, in a regional city
• Asked students, in one on one interviews, to do a
  series of graduated questions until they could
  not continue, then we asked them about the
  experience

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Data Collection

• Included
• Student surveys
• Individual interviews with students
• Observation of students performance on a range
  of tasks
• Recording of students responses to protocol
  questions

• Matching students performance and response
  against background data including teacher
  achievement and effort rating and gender

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The key findings were

• The students were surprisingly confident in their
  own ability, they perceived themselves as trying
  hard, and they saw these as linked.
• The students seemed aware of the importance of
  effort.
• Even though we anticipated that students would
  give up when posed difficult tasks and this would
  provide the prompt for our discussions, in both
  the English and mathematics tasks all students
  persevered for the whole time.

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More results

• A key finding was that, to an open response item,
  nearly half of the responses related to the
  negative influence of classmates. The responses
  explain a lack of observable effort as being, on
  one hand, a result of a desire to be popular, and
  on the other hand, from fear of retribution from
  peers.
• Interestingly, many students indicated that they
  feel that the lack of effort by some students is
  an issue that should be addressed. These
  suggestions about how this could be done were
  extraordinarily insightful, mature, and
  empathetic.

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Recommendations for action

• There are five specific implications for
  educataors. In particular it is recommended that
  we
• work on building an understanding of the nature
  of community, the world of work, the nature of
  study pathways and options, and strategies to
  optimise options so that students can be aware of
  the relationship between their opportunities at
  school and the future life choices

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• address the relevance of the curriculum and the
  type of tasks used. If the students do not
  connect schooling to their future then tasks that
  are only relevant for students whose goals
  include higher study may not be attractive to the
  others. Note that this does not mean basing
  curriculum on limited student goals, but engaging
  students in learning activities that are
  intrinsically engaging

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• make students more aware of their actual
  achievement and effort. This includes usual
  assessment modes, and also the processes for
  affirming effort. It is possible that primary and
  junior secondary teachers give students
  unrealistically positive evaluations of their
  achievement and effort. This has dual negative
  effects of endorsing inadequate effort and
  achievement, and fostering inappropriate goals of
  seeking teacher endorsement

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• teach self-regulatory behaviours such as
  cognitive, meta-cognitive, social, and affective
  awareness. As with other aspects of schooling,
  these behaviours are able to be learned, and it
  is lower achieving students that most need
  specific support in developing such behaviours

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• identify interventions that address mismatches
  between teacher and student expectations for
  classroom and school-based activities. Schooling
  processes are compatible with conventional middle
  class aspirations, but are less obvious for
  students from families who do not have such
  familiarity with the ways schools operate.

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The tension with learning the disciplines

• Should we talk about intellectual development? Is
  it possible that some approaches develop people
  intellectually and others dont
• What are the skills that will allow students to
  grow to their potential?

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What do the disciplines have to offer?

• Learning music, especially where reading and
  interpreting notes is involved, seems connected
  with ID
• Poetry gives insights into language that are not
  possible through report writing and reading
  newspapers (also the experience of remembering)
• Learning the skills of drawing seems to have
  transfer across domains and are associated with
  high level performance in many fields
• Learning to speak a second language (even if this
  is English) is liberating, builds tolerance and
  connections, postpones senility, broadens
  communication genres,
• Intense physical activity seems to enhance
  performance in all fields, and physical skill
  development augments this
• There are abstract principles in understanding
  food preparation that go beyond learning to cook
• Ditto IT
• It is not possible to appreciate the environment
  unless you have words to describe what you see,
  hear, feel, smell,

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• Štech (2006) argued that school mathematics has a
  role in prompting reflection, abstraction and
  generalisation that is not possible in responding
  to everyday tasks. Štech was critical of
  approaches that
• localise the dynamic of learning almost
  exclusively into the world of everyday experience
  and neglect the importance of activities
  directed at reflection and abstraction. Thus they
  hinder investigations into the differences and
  tensions between an item of knowledge in its
  everyday form and one which is formalised and
  therefore bypass the decisive moment of cognitive
  and personal development of the individual. (p.
  I-39)

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Basically the argument is

• Activities in which students engage are the
  medium through teachers (broadly defined) and
  students communicate
• The type of activity determines the type of
  learning
• It is better for the student to be engaged by,
  in, or through the activity rather than through
  the personality of the teachers, the fear of
  parent,

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Some of the characteristics of appropriate
activities are

• a need for variety and diversity,
• for activities to include meaningful reasons for
  students to engage in the tasks,
• ideally for the activities to be personally
  relevant
• for there to be challenge, interest and control
  (see Middleton, 1995)
• to include a social component (probably not with
  friends)

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In the case of numeracy

• There were over 600 specific projects in
  Australia (in 2004) involving parents in numeracy
  education of their children in some way
• The workplace demands for numeracy including
  accuracy, transfer, and adaptable knowledge
  (data, networks)

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Implications for Community School Partnerships

• SPP up to you
• parents

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Some comments offered starting points for some
subsequent intervention

• Its good to be smart because then you know
  stuff, and if youre dumb just so your friends
  like you then its really bad. Obviously theyre
  not your friends if they make you be dumb to be
  their friend.

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Next steps?

• Arrange these cards in order to make a story
• Write a story about when you have underperformed
  to be liked by your friends
• Role play
• video
• What would you say to a friend you said that they
  didnt try their best because they wanted to be
  your friend

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Another one

• if youre playing (sport) and you mess up or
  something and you have a kick and it falls short
  or it goes out of bounds on the full where it
  shouldnt, if you have someone on your team that
  says, Youll get the next one, youre more
  confident to keep playing, but if someone is
  like, What are you doing?