Student Engagement Can Be Elusive. Here’s How to Help
Daniel Pink, in his bestselling book Drive, states the key to intrinsic
motivation is autonomy, mastery, and purpose. I would argue that in education,
the order matters. You can’t start with full autonomy (often called voice and
choice) or you might end up with anarchy. The majority of students will not
voluntarily choose to learn most content standards. First, the teacher needs
to connect their content to a relevant purpose. The framework that I wield to
create meaning for students is project-based learning (PBL).
Every PBL project begins with an entry event to activate student thinking and
to illustrate how the class content is relevant in the world. An entry event
could be an engaging video, science experiment, a simulation, fascinating
guest speaker, reading a picture book, or field work where students
participate in active learning. Effective entry events combine cognitive and
empathetic “hooks” to connect students to content. They answer the age-old
student question, “When are we ever going to use this?” before students can
even ask it.
Once students have a strong purpose from the entry event, I give them voice
and choice wherever appropriate in the project. At different times, this looks
like choosing who they work with, what aspect of a problem to focus on, or
what their final product will be. PBL emphasizes creativity and
problem-solving throughout the process. Be mindful that too much choice for
students unfamiliar with PBL can be paralyzing. It is important to balance
freedom and structure for student success. Since I develop relationships with
my students and am aware of their hobbies and passions, I often suggest
avenues that link my content to their interests.
For example, when teaching American history, I had two boys who were obsessed
with the outdoors, botany, and woodsmanship. One of them had even built a
wigwam at his house. For each project, I steered them to consider the
environmental impact or the consequences on Native Americans, honoring their
expertise on these important subtopics.
Alongside entry events, another aspect of PBL that motivates students is
partnerships with the local community. A compelling project requires students
to address local problems through inquiry, research, and interviews in their
neighborhood. Young people interact with diverse individuals and organizations
to analyze multiple perspectives on the local impact of their studied problem.
Many PBL projects utilize service learning or volunteering to improve an issue
in the community. Service learning motivates students because their work has a
valid purpose beyond the teacher’s recycling bin.
Sometimes, I still have a student who seems disinterested in my project even
though the rest of the class is motivated. One approach that has worked for me
is to design a project personalized with that one particular student in mind.
Just like curb cuts in a sidewalk, originally designed for wheelchairs,
benefit many other users such as bicyclists, skateboards, strollers, and
rollerbladers, designing your project with one hard to reach learner in mind
benefits all students.
I had some students who were not very passionate about any history topics but
were engrossed with making movies, from writing to acting to directing and set
design. I started including videos as a final product option, and those
students enthusiastically recorded our content to tell its story. Other
students enjoyed their work and started to choose video options, too.
All students come to school as knowers even before being taught anything and
come to our classes with unique assets such as their everyday experiences
interacting with the natural world, curiosities, interests, cultures, and
abilities. We can leverage these assets to understand their incoming ideas
better and use them to create everyday classroom experiences that use
experiential learning for sense making. Viewing learning as sense making is
essential in a technology-driven, global economy where critical thinking and
problem-solving are necessary.
While sense making is critical, the process can be challenging for students if
they play a more passive role in the classroom. Shifting from passive to
active student experiences requires classroom environments that play a
supportive role. Shifting to more active learning requires a simultaneous
focus on students’ emotions, motivations, attitudes, beliefs, and cognition,
which develop in parallel streams. You may not have considered the role of
emotions on cognition and vice versa.
What Does the Research Tell Us About Cognition and Emotions?
We know from the neurosciences that all learning begins as sensory information
and what comes into the brain is immediately filtered to different structures
of the brain called the “thinking brain” and “reactive brain” (McTighe and
Willis 2019). For example, instructional practices that engage student
thinking, allow them to make predictions that draw on firsthand experiences,
and encourage students to view learning as a developmental process (thinking
and reflecting on developing understanding) promote a feeling of pleasure,
satisfaction, and motivation to continue the desired response and sent to the
“thinking brain.”
Conversely, instructional practices that create a sense of stress for students
(anxiety related to speaking in front of peers, fear of being incorrect, worry
about demands of course/school) put the brain in survival mode and diverted to
what has been called the “reactive brain.”
A popular theory in world-language education elaborates on the notion of a
reactive brain to suggest that students screen information based on the
potential stresses associated with learning. The “affective filter” hypothesis
(See Stephen Krashen) suggests that language learning is mediated by students’
perception of the learning environment and whether the risk of exposing an
idea through communication, either spoken or written, is worth the reward.
The implications behind the “thinking and reactive brain” and the “affective
filter” can be used in lesson and curriculum design to enhance our
instruction.
Big Idea 1: Instructional sequence is key in supporting student’s taking
intellectual risks.
One contemporary approach that promotes sense making based on lived
experiences is the PSOE (Predict, Share, Observe, and Explain). The Predict
stage engages students’ interest in the lesson and identifies their initial
ideas and experiences (including misconceptions). Activities, questions, and
problems stimulate student ideas based on prior experiences and focus on
specific topics. Predictions are never graded. Teachers emphasize that
regardless of the accuracy of a prediction, all students will come to a more
sophisticated understanding from their classroom interactions.
Next, the Share phase offers students the chance to articulate their thinking
and reasoning with their peers. The Share phase is a chance for students to
refine their understanding through conversation. Then, the Observe stage
presents students with firsthand experiences and discussions centered around
their observations, data, or other evidence.
During the Observe stage, activities are performed.
Finally, the Explain stage allows students to generate ideas based on
firsthand experiences. After students have explained concepts in their way,
teachers try introducing new terms and ideas. The teacher’s explanation and
introduction of new ideas become partially rich experiences if they occur in
light of students’ firsthand experiences. While the names of the phases help
teachers from a lesson-design standpoint, in practice, students move
seamlessly from activity to activity.
Big Idea 2: Productive discourse and writing requires a balance between old
and new ideas and challenging oneself to learn from experiences.
Students need to learn that they are not alone in the process and are part of
a more prominent culture, their classroom, that grows based on the collective
work of each other. With this in mind, educators must consider the role of
productive discourse and writing in current classroom practices. Educators
must also recognize the importance of these skills as significant factors in
students’ development. However, in today’s classroom, the approach to these
skills requires new ideas that find themselves in balance with established
ideas. When students find writing and discourse dull, mechanical,
uninteresting, and even laborious, these skills suffer. Educators must apply
balanced ideas that help make these skills compelling, engaging,
collaborative, and accessible to the students. Students also need meaning,
significance, and variation to acquire and retain these skills.
Moreover, teachers must not underestimate the need to support students through
the process of improving their writing and discourse abilities. When
activities prove to be too difficult for students, their affective filter
rises and inhibits the educational and acquisition process. Students’ brains
will move into the reactive mode, and this can lead to frustration and
disengagement.
Conversely, when educators implement ideas that allow students to grow in
confidence and students are able to more freely engage and share their own
thoughts and ideas, the affective filter lowers, and discourse and writing
become enjoyable and productive. This results in students becoming more
comfortable with these skills and wanting to engage, collaborate, and share in
the classroom.
Ann Stiltner is a high school special education teacher in Connecticut. She
writes the blog from Room A212 (annstiltner.com/blog). Follow her on Twitter
@fromrooma212:
True internal motivation is a real challenge for teachers to nurture in their
students. Some students come ready with an enthusiasm to learn already in
place, and others need help from a teacher. Below are ideas I have used to
engage my high school students.
Rewards – Give them immediate and worthwhile feedback. A final grade in a high
school class 10 weeks from now is not going to motivate a challenged student.
Put in layers of rewards that are short term and longer term.
Here are some rewards I have used: positive calls to parent/guardian, paper
notes letting them know I have noticed them doing something good, encouraging
messages in Google Classroom, and messages to coaches or other adults
important to the student. I have also used behavior contracts written for
individual students spelling out expected behaviors and a rewards menu
including free time or time to use their phone. I have held raffles for
students who put away their phones. Prizes included gift cards, no-homework
coupons, and pizza parties. It means something for them to see a teacher
trying to help them demonstrate the behaviors you know are key to their
success.
Choice – Create a student-centered classroom where choice and agency are a
priority. Let them have a say in the classroom. When my aide/paraprofessional
retired in November, I was dreading not having her help. But it opened up the
opportunity for me to depend more on students, and they stepped up to the
challenge. Passing out papers, helping peers, and running errands are some of
the jobs my students did. Together, we were building a community where we were
all needed and we depended on each other.
Go Light on Rules – Don’t be a heavy disciplinarian. Don’t let them see you
get all bent out of shape by their negative behavior. Remind them about the
core requirements for your classroom but don’t get caught up in the “my way or
the highway” philosophy. Make sure you have 1-4 things that are nonnegotiable
in your classroom. Things like safety (both physical and emotional), learning,
and growth are mine.
Be Yourself – Let them get to know you and your weaknesses. Be humble. If they
see you being flawed and OK with it, then they might be more likely to share
their weakness and won’t participate in negative behavior. This behavior may
be a way for them to hide and deflect things about themselves they are
embarrassed or ashamed about.
Remember They Are Children – Even if your student is 6-feet tall and
17-years-old, they are still a child. They know very little about how the
world works. Also, their lived experience may be very different from yours. A
student who may seem, from a teacher’s perspective, to be rude and
disrespectful may be using the skills they have learned to survive in a world
where adults cannot be trusted. They may have learned to challenge adults to
protect themselves or their younger siblings.
Get to Know Them – Ask their other teachers what they like or what their
experience has been with the student. Get to know their parents and home life.
Take a genuine and unique interest in them. Believe in them and find something
good and special about them. It might be a challenge to identify a positive
for some students, but it is key to knowing who they are and what will
motivate them.
Small Steps – Don’t expect a student who is motivated to look the same way you
look when you are motivated. A student who is only skipping your class once a
week instead of every day is an improvement in their motivation. Take that as
an improvement and go with it. Keep doing what you are doing.
Most of All, Don’t Give Up – A teacher will try a couple of these ideas and
give up thinking a student can’t be motivated. Keep trying to motivate
students who seem the most disengaged and most unreachable. All these ideas
will create a positive classroom environment for all students to reach their
potential and do their best.
