Saturday, April 18, 2009

Schoolwide Learning Goals

Schoolwide Learning Goals

Much like individual classrooms, schools vary in the types of learning goals they emphasize. As Maehr and Midgley note, “Decisions, practices, and actions that have schoolwide effects are likely to symbolize the purposes and meaning of time spent in a particular school.” For example, some school “streess learning more for its own sake” while “others put special emphasis on extrinsic rewards and competition”

Some school leaders intentionally downplay differences in the relative ability of students and minimize crossstudent comparisons. Instead they communicate to students through their words and actions that effort is valued and that the puspose of learning is “to gain understanding, insight, or skill,” not to outtperform others. When leaders strive to communicate the latter message, they in turn are likely to influence the learning goals that students adopt, and thereby play” a profoundly important role in the determination of the nature and quality of student motivation and learning”

Teachers as well as students are affected by the signals sent out at the school level. School-level policies and practices tend to encourage or restrict teachers’ freedom to implement motivational strategies at a classroom level. In addition, school leaders are influential in creating the psychological climate of the school, which can either support or tear down teacher motivation and morale. In turn, teacher motivation and commitment affect student motivation, and vice versa.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

RELATIONSHIPS WITH TEACHERS

RELATIONSHIPS WITH TEACHERS

From the responses provided by students in this study, the one element that appears to most strongly influence whether school is a place they enjoy is the perceived presence or absence of caring. The nature of students’ relationships with teachers is central to what makes school appealing or distasteful, inviting or uninviting. What students say they want is “authentic relationships where they are trusted, given responsibility, spoken to honestly and warmly, and treated with dignity and respect. They feel adults inside schools are too busy, don’t understand or just don’t care about them”

Both teachers and caring somewhat more personally and more tangibly than did teachers. Students experienced teachers as caring when they directly stated that they cared, “when they laughed with them, trusted them, asked them or told them personal things, were honest, wrote them letters, called home to say nice things, touched them with pats, hugs, hand shakes or gave them the ‘high five,’ or otherwise recognized them as individuals”

As Poplin and weeres note, “The relationship between students and their teachers seems to dominate students’ feelings about school.” When students who were interviewed made positive comments about school, “they usually involved reports of individuals who care, listen, understand, respect others and are honest, open and sensitive.”

Students repeatedly “raised the issue of care” when asked about their school experience, stating that “what they liked best about school was when people, particularly teachers, cared about them or did special things for them.” Conversely, students were vociferous about “being ignored, not being cared for, and receiving negative treatment.”

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

A SENSE OF CARING AND CONNECTION

A SENSE OF CARING AND CONNECTION

Students’ feeling and attitudes about school are linked to teachers. Wheter they have positive or negative associations with school is primarly based on and directly related to their experience with teachers.

Higher standards, more effective teaching techniques, better account-ability, clearer goals all may be necessary, but they are not likely to be sufficient. If students have teachers who care about them, expect much from them, and communicate a love of knowledge, the students will respond in kind. But all too often, the teens say, teachers appear to be uninterested, unwilling to challenge, and indifferent to the subjects they teach.

More attentive to students’ thoughts and feelings teachers will be in a better position to facilitate student motivation and engagement: As teachers learn more about how students think and feel, they will be able to create classes where students have fun because they are engaged in learning in diverse, purposeful, and meaningful ways.

Clearly, education consists of more than test scores and academic achievement, but even the goal of academic excellence will be compromised if feeling cared about is not an integral part of students’ school experience. As Nel Noddings (1995) states, “We should want more from our educational efforts than adequate academic achievement. But we will not achieve even that meager success unless our children believe that they themselves are cared for and learn to care for others.”