Raising teacher expectations, changing beliefs and enhancing student achievement

Raising teacher expectations, changing beliefs and enhancing student achievement Workshop 4

Workshop 4: Motivation, evaluation and student responsibility for learning • Welcome • Questions/ queries • Outline of the day’s programme

Plan for the day • 9.05: Review of last workshop • 9.15: Implementing changes • 9.40: Motivation, evaluation and student responsibility for learning: General evidence • 10.30: Morning tea • 11.00: Goal setting: the evidence • 11.40: Goal setting in practice • 12.30: Lunch • 1.00: Planning for change • 1.30: Where to next?

Review of last workshop • Teaching resource • Class climate ideas you might use • Action plan • Changes you have planned/ implemented this term • Have you tried anything new? • How are the innovations going?

Motivation, evaluation and student autonomy • What do high expectation teachers say? • What does the research evidence say? • How can we put it together in our classrooms?

Fostering intrinsic motivation • Heather: “I just think that having mixed ability with the ability is really important so that they have all got a contribution to make and their skills, their particular skills are valued this way because if you have a pecking order in the class, motivation can go out the window and you won’t see star charts and stuff like that in my room. I am more interested in intrinsic motivation than extrinsic so I don’t have them.”

Using student interests • Helen: “I’m always looking to see what interests children.” • Holly: “I have a couple of really low kids who aren’t interested in maths and just don’t like it, but they love cricket so we found some batting averages activities and they just loved it and they worked on that problem for 40 minutes until they worked it out…Sometimes it’s finding activities that they are interested in, rather than just doing something they are not into.”

Motivation and feedback • Heather: “Well I think they have to know what they can do… Actually knowing what it is that they are learning to do is really powerful and potent. So it’s easy for the children to know what they are working on and I try to always be specific about why we are doing it because I just think that’s educationally sound. I think they need to know when they have made personal progress.”

Evaluation and feedback • Regular monitoring • Setting goals, re-setting goals • Heather: “The lessons are needs-based in that I give a lot of feedback to children and in the talking you know about them, and the watching, observing, that’s the time when I actually identify their learning or lack of learning and what skill they need to sharpen next, so then I weave that into whatever I am doing.” • Self-monitoring • Learning intentions

Student autonomy and choice • Holly: “The children can choose the activities they do so they are not grouped for actual activities.” • “ I just sort of give them an idea of where we are going, how we are going to get there but I actually let them take some ownership of the process. How do you want to do it? Do we want to use overheads? Do we want to make a video of what we are doing?... But I actually let them take some ownership of the process.”

Student autonomy and choice • Helen: “There are activities that they can go to by choice. There are computer activities…” • Holly: “I basically give them a choice to a point and as long as they are going in the right direction that I want them to be going in…So often I try and let them decide on their own learning experiences.” • Hannah: “I might give them a range and say we could work on this, or we could work on that, what would you like to work on? So that they have got to take ownership of it.”

Mastery and performance goals • What are they? • Impact of mastery goals • School policy and traditional culture • Performance goals • Performance approach • Performance avoid

Goal-setting • Why do some people perform better on work tasks than others? • When is goal-setting effective?

Challenging goals • Higher levels of performance • Greater satisfaction • Importance of feedback

Goal setting and feedback • Based on learning intentions • Feedback provides the basis for setting goals • Feedback should emphasise progress

Goal setting and self-efficacy • Self-efficacy and motivation • Self-efficacy and teachers

Goal setting as motivation • Setting proximal goals • Promoting self-motivation

Personal bests • Specific • Challenging • Competitively self-referenced • Self-improvement based

Summary • Goal-setting enhances self-directed behaviour; sustains motivation; enhances self-efficacy • Goal setting bridges the gap between learning intentions and success criteria

Effective goal setting • Key factors: • Motivation • Attention • Challenge • Feedback • Self-efficacy • Self-regulation • The proximal versus the distal nature of the goal • Self-set versus teacher-assisted goals

asTTle and goal-setting • Individual learning pathway • What next? • Progress chart

SMART goals • Specific • Measurable • Achievable • Realistic • Timely

Goal setting and the teacher role • Teach about goal setting • Teach strategies for setting personal goals in relation to a pre-test they have had • Teach how to set and write goals

Planning for change • How will I introduce goal setting into my classroom? • How could the goal-setting booklet be adapted for my classroom? • How will I use asTTle to set goals with my students?

Where to next? • Project partners • Journal surveys • Research timetable • Expectation survey late June • asTTle tests – late June/ early July • Videos: August • Teacher beliefs questionnaire: November • Student questionnaires: November • asTTle tests: November • Evaluation of the first year: late November

Where to next? • After school meetings/ workshops? • Mentoring of colleagues? • My availability • Other suggestions?

Raising teacher expectations, changing beliefs and enhancing student achievement