Article

 Student engagement is important because it's linked to increased student achievement. Hundreds of studies have found that when teachers use strategies designed to capture students attention and actively involve them in the learning process, students' achievements soar. Best schools of theories I’d like to share are “Implications From Studies In Developmental Psychology And Multicultural Interactions” and “Implications From Studies On Motivation And Student Engagement”.

1. Implications From Studies In Developmental Psychology And Multicultural Interactions:

Students are different and they differ according to the time to learn and what to learn. We need to predict managing a classroom community of students with extreme differences with respect to the following variables:

1. Interest in learning: students have different levels of interest in the subject and the material. We should make sure that we sustain the interest of those who already have it and motivate those who are not very interested. For example,  begin the lesson or end it with a game such as maze games, bingo games to make the lesson more interesting.

2. Self confidence: students have different levels of self confidence. Some of them view learning tasks as opportunities to acquire new abilities and skills and the others fear to express and engage in the classroom. We need to make sure to help students who have less self confidence to regain their confidence in their ability to achieve. For example, engage the students with less self confidence in a group with good confidence, let them understand the activity given to each group , and let them answer the questions and motivate them to continue in that manner.

3. Perception of what is important: students who don’t perceive the value of what they are learning will not exert enough effort and this will affect their level of motivation. We should make what we are teaching clear for students. For example, try to make more activities on some ideas with many levels to make sure all get the idea.

4. Attitude toward school: some students have a lot of greetings for the school while others don't. We should encourage students to the school by viewing it positively. 

5. Initiation to reason: some students resist challenges of many learning activities we design and others don’t welcome the idea. In this case we need to train them on that activity, if they are not trained on it, they will not get engaged in it.for example, train the students a lot for multiplication to motivate them to play with their friends the games on multiplication, so they will enjoy the game.

6. Prior achievements: most of the students will fail to learn some content at a level that we consider it prerequisite. Learning gaps vary from student to student. We need to make sure to review everything before we begin a new task.

7. Experiences on which you can build: we should motivate students to let them engage and this can be done by relating teaching to their previous experiences.

8. Home and social life: students come  from a diversity of backgrounds and parenting students will range from fully supportive to neglectful and from present parents to absence. This will affect how students interact in the classroom. We need to know the background of each student and how it affects their engagement. For example, there was a student who always got a low mark on my subject. I asked about him and his marks of the previous years. It was full. I talked with him and knew that his mom was sick and that affected his ability to study. I helped him during that time to regain his full marks.

9. Cultural background: schools contain students from many cultures, we should understand the cultural background of the students because this will affect the interaction in class.

10. First language: if the first language of the student is different from the first language of the teacher, this will affect their level of engagement. For example, if in the class a student has French as his first language and the teacher is English, the teacher should try to let him understand every idea she talks about.

11. Exceptionalities: in the classroom, we will meet special cases such as dyslexia, ADHD, Giftedness etc… We should find ways to engage them in the classroom.

12. Substance abuse: schools might have students who are on drugs, have lack of confidence, hyperactivity etc… We should take care of these students and support them to be back on track by taking them to the school's psychologist  or doctor to help them get rid of it.

13. Antisocial tendencies: some students are antisocial and they need support to engage and interact with students in the classroom.

II. Implications From Studies On Motivation And Students Engagements:

“ Schools are boring” “ I hate mathematics” “ I hate reading” . Not all school work is entertaining for all students. We need to think about how we can motivate students to be engaged in the learning task.

We have two types of motivation:

1. Intrinsic motivation: it is a motivation within a source. Students learn to recognize the value of learning activity from being positively reinforced as a direct result of being engaged.

2. Extrinsic motivation: it is motivation from external sources, students learn for the sake of the reward.

 

According to research, students who are intrinsically motivated are much more engaged than those who are extrinsically. There are two extrinsic motivators that can be effective such as grades and praise.

For example, motivate students to share their answers in the classroom by giving them marks, or smiley face stickers. If the students share he takes a sticker and when he gets a certain number of stickers he gets the full mark in sharing.

Finding ways to increase motivation is crucial because it allows us to change behavior, develop competencies, be creative, set goals etc...