The Fourth R in Education -- Relationships

“The Fourth R in Education—Relationships” makes it extremely clear that a student’s feelings about the academic material determines how well they do in the class.  In Witmer’s article, he quotes Caine and Caine as saying “Learning occurs only when what is being presented is meaningful enough to the student that he or she decides to actively engage in the learning experience,” (1994).  Witmer also quotes Glasser (1998) as explaining “people often evaluate an activity as meaningful when it satisfies human emotional needs.”  This means that teachers need to find ways to make their lessons meaningful to their students. 

Since the human brain does not automatically separate cognition from emotion (Witmer 2005), a student might be emotionally turned-off from a topic or situation and, in turn, subconsciously shut down cognitively. We need to keep our students invested in what they are learning. One way to do this would to simply get invested in our students – they will realize that we care, and in turn, care about the work they produce in class because they do not want to disappoint their teacher.  

One way to let students know we care about their lives is to have them complete an interest inventory.  “The first job of any teacher at any level is to know students’ names and to know something unique about each student…Using students’ names and interests in classroom examples personalizes the learning and sends a message that each students is valued in this class (Wong and Wong 1998),” (Witmer 225).  If we use something such as this interest inventory idea to get to know our students, we can send them the message that we do truly care about them and have an interest in their future.

Witmer, M. M. (2005). The Fourth R in Education--Relationships. Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas. 78(5), 224.

Viewing Classroom Management through a Social and Emotional Lens

“Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is an approach that teaches individuals to recognize, regulate, and express the social and emotional aspects of their lives so they can successfully manage life tasks,”  (Norris 2003).  Some people are naturally attuned to their emotions as well as others, and some people are not.  There is no program for SEL, however it is possible to gain emotional intelligence.  “Leaders in the field of SEL believe that schools need to take a more programmatic approach where SEL behaviors permeate every part of school life—the policies, curricula, instruction, and interactions of all who work and learn there (Elias, Arnold, & Hussey, 2003),” (Norris 2003). SEL is important in the classroom because it helps teachers to be aware of their students’ emotions. It is equally as important for students to have a decent level of emotional intelligence so that they can express themselves correctly. 

The following table shows key skills students and teachers must have in order to foster social and emotional learning:

(Norris 2003)

It is important that teachers create a positive classroom climate in order for their students to be successful. In order for this to occur, teachers must have a well-organized classroom management plan in place. “Well-organized classroom management plans establish the

parameters for the physical, social, emotional, and intellectual environments of the classroom. Classrooms where students feel safe to take risks, acquire new knowledge, and know they are valued members of a community are classrooms where learning is optimized (Evertson, Emmer, & Worsham, 2003; National Research Council, 2000; Wang, Haertel, & Walberg, 1994),” (Norris 2003). 

There are several aspects of SEL to consider: Do teachers with higher levels of SEL competencies remain in the field longer because they have more job satisfaction? What SEL approaches can narrow the achievement gap between ethnicities and genders in the classroom? Can high levels of SEL in students decrease bullying? All of these are reasons to address SEL in the classroom and try to portray high levels of emotional competencies to our students.  After all, they learn most through our modeling. 

Norris, J. A. (2003). Looking at Classroom Management through a Social and Emotional Learning Lens. Theory Into Practice. 42(4), 313-318.

How Students View Gender Equity in the Classroom

As previously stated, it is important for students to feel that the classroom is a safe and fair environment.  The students need to feel like they can be themselves if they are going to be high achievers.  The issue of gender is long-standing in education and is not going to go away any time soon.  The issue is: are students of either gender treated fairly?  A study was done to examine the way students felt about this issue, to see how they perceive the level of gender equity in the classroom.

What the study determined is that teachers bring in their own beliefs to the classroom and let them color the way they teach.  The study found that teachers see boys as lower-achieving students and girls as higher-achieving students.  “Boys are perceived as a problem, while girls are increasingly being constructed as the ideal student. Teachers speak of boys dominating their teaching time and attention within the classroom,” (Myhill & Jones, 2006).

The students seemed to believe that the way the students were treated was based on how the students did in a particular subject, based on gender stereotypes.  One student, Sarah, said “Sometimes in science the boys will be treated better because they know more about it, or in say art, girls can do better art and they like get better treated,” (Myhill & Jones, 2006).  She seems to believe that the way teachers treat their students and their levels of achievement seems to be in direct relationship to their academic expectations determined by gender.

Another thing the students seemed to agree on was that teachers were more lenient on the girls. A student, Lucy, made the observation that “Some teachers are really sexist…they will tell off a boy just like that, but girls not so easily,” (Myhill & Jones, 2006), and Natasha seems to agree with her in that “teachers do tend to be lighter on girls…I think it’s because they think that girls are more sensitive, and therefore can break down in tears or something,” (Myhill & Jones, 2006).

Boys tended to be more blunt in their answers when asked about unfair treatment in the classroom.  “Abraham claims that ‘boys are given the hard end and girls are normally given the lenient end,’ while Alex complains that his teacher ‘tells us off more and she makes us do everything last, like after the girls’,” (Myhill & Jones, 2006).

The lesson from this article is obvious: students are more perceptive than teachers think they are.  Teachers must treat their students equally, even if coming in with any kind of a bias (which they really should not be, anyway).  If students begin to think they are being treated unfairly, they will start to think differently of the teacher and, as stated in previous posts, it is important what the students think of their teacher.

Myhill, D., & Jones, S. (2006). "She Doesn't Shout at No Girls": Pupils' Perceptions of Gender Equity in the Classroom. Cambridge Journal of Education. 36(1), 99-113.

Can Teachers Motivate Students to Learn?

As I have stated before, and can guarantee I will state again, having a prosocial classroom climate is of the utmost importance to teachers who want to be effective.  Before I get into the article I will be discussing today, I wanted to bring up this graphic model I found on another article. It shows the best way to go about developing a prosocial classroom and, as you can see, “Teachers’ Social/Emotional Competence and Well-being,” “Effective Classroom Management,” “Healthy Classroom Climate,” and “Students’ Social, Emotional, and Academic Outcomes” are all centrally important. 

The prosocial classroom: A model of teacher social and emotional competence and classroom and student outcomes.

Jennings, P. A., & Greenberg, M. T. (2009). The Prosocial Classroom: Teacher Social and Emotional Competence in Relation to Student and Classroom Outcomes. Review of Educational Research. 79(1), 491-525.

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It is well known that student motivation is integral in their academic success.  Is it the teacher’s job to motivate students to learn? Is that even possible?  “This study aimed to make a contribution to this line of research by examining the relative importance of teachers’ instructional behavior and efficacy beliefs to explain variation in student motivation,” (Thoonen, Sleegers, Peetsma, & Oort, 2011).  Working under the assumption that the way in which teachers create learning environments to suit their students’ specific needs and interests would positively affect different aspects of the motivation of their students, the authors “used psychological theories on motivation and current conceptions of learning and instruction to identify several elements of a supportive learning environment that affect students’ motivation to learn,” (Thoonen et al., 2011).  

Students’ Motivation to Learn

Goal orientation is important to a students’ motivation.  It affects how students experience learning tasks and the meaning given to learning opportunities.  “Students with a mastery goal orientation have learning goals focused on the development of competence or task mastery,” (Thoonen et al., 2011).  These students will view school as a challenge and this is what causes the student to focus on the task at hand.”Mastery orientation is positively related to perceptions of academic efficacy…and leads to an increase in self-regulated learning and higher achievement,” (Thoonen et al., 2011).

Performance avoidance orientation refers to the student avoiding unfavorable judgments on their ability level. “A performance-avoidance orientation is focused on avoiding showing incompetence, and this avoidance orientation is viewed as evoking processes that are antithetical to the intrinsic motivation construct,” (Thoonen et al., 2011).  It has been suggested in research that students with the performance avoidance orientation have reduced opportunities to expand knowledge.

Intrinsic motivation refers to a student doing a task or assignment simply for the enjoyment of doing it.  The will to do the assignment comes from within, not from outside factors.  Extrinsic motivation refers to a student doing a task or assignment because they will get a desirable outcome from it.

Students’ Motivation and Teachers’ Teaching

Research in recent years has shown that an increase in students’ self-regulation has positive effects on their motivation and performance. A model that fosters self-regulated learning is called process-oriented instruction. 

“Process-oriented instruction implies that the external control of the learning process by teachers shift gradually to an internal control over the learning process by students themselves.  Furthermore, teachers using process-oriented instruction focus on knowledge building in the domain (subject-area), pay attention to emotional aspects of learning and treat learning process and results as social phenomena (Bolhuis 2003). Performaing process-oriented instruction facilitates independent learning, supports students to become proficient learners and prepares them for lifelong learning,” (Thoonen et al., 2011).

Cooperative learning also influences student outcomes.  Motivational and learning perspectives form the theoretical basis of cooperative learning.  “Drawing on motivational theories, it is assumed that positive interdependence (cooperation) is based on intrinsic motivation and interaction which encourage and facilitate learners’ efforts,” (Thoonen et al., 2011).  This potentially results in positive relationships, psychological well-being, and high academic achievement.

So can teachers really motivate students to learn?

Simply put, yes and no.  Students already possess determining factors of their motivational levels.  Some students are intrinsically motivated, while others are motivated extrinsically. Some students are motivationally goal oriented while others exhibit performance avoidance characteristics.  There are things that teachers can do, however, to foster students’ motivation such as developing self-regulation and employing cooperative learning techniques.  Motivation levels are not simply due to students’ intrinsic levels, but also rely on the teachers’ techniques.

Thoonen, E. E. J., Sleegers, P. J. C., Peetsma, T. T. D., & Oort, F. J. (2011). Can Teachers Motivate Students to Learn? Educational Studies. 37(3), 345-360.

Developing a Positive Classroom Climate and Building Relationships with Students

One of the most important aspects of classroom management is the classroom climate and relationships you build with your students.  A plethora of research has been done on the positive effects of building prosocial relationships with students in the classroom.  “Teachers must ‘win their students’ hearts while getting inside their students’ heads’ (Wolk, 2003 p.14). As Haberman (1995) suggested, this winning of the hearts occurs through very personal interactions, one student at a time,” (Beaty-O’Ferrall, Green, & Hanna, 2010). 

Teachers who have these personal, meaningful relationships with their students experience less behavioral problems and better academic performance in the classroom. It may seem difficult to promote these prosocial relationship and yet maintain the classroom climate and continue teaching effectively, but Beaty-O’Ferrall et al. provide techniques that have already been adapted for teachers in order to make education more effective (2010).

One of the most effective ways to build a relationship with a student is to simply get to know more about them. There might be something in their life that is affecting the way they perform academically, and you might have just chalked this up to being lazy or ill-prepared.  “Teachers who adopt a relationship-building approach to classroom management by focusing on developing the whole person are more likely to help students develop positive, socially-appropriate behaviors,” (Beaty-O’Ferrall et al., 2010).  

Some general suggestions for building positive student-teacher relationships include gentle interventions, making time to bond with the student, relying more on reinforcing positive behavior than punishment for negative behavior, and giving lessons and activities that ensure success for all students.  These strategies are fine and dandy for some students, but we must continuously think of students as individuals, not as a group, and realize that each student has individual needs.  A teacher must employ other strategies when dealing with more difficult students. These strategies include, but are not limited to:

• ­Building empathy – People in education tend to view empathy is a largely misunderstood concept, often seen as simple affection or caring. While this is true, it is also much more than that. “Adler (1956) defined empathy as ‘seeing with the eyes of another, hearing with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another,” (Beaty-O’Ferrall et al., 2010).  The end result of empathy should be that the student feels heard and understood.

• Admiring negative attitudes and behaviors – I’m sure you read this bullet point and immediately started to question my sanity.  I assure you, this is a researched and tested method “based on a well established area of research called ‘positive psychology’ (Seligman, 1999). This approach looks upon negative student behavior as a skill he or she has been practicing and refining for many years,” (Beaty-O’Ferrall et al., 2010).  Since most of these skills get their start within the students’ family, it is only expected that they will come with the students to the school setting. Beat-O’Ferrall et al. gives the example of a student who has only been effective by manipulating to get her needs met in her family, so of course, she would bring this skill to school to get her needs met there as well.  “Rather than engage in a power struggle with such a student, a teacher should acknowledge the skill that the student has worked so hard to develop—and then redirect it,” (Beaty-O’Ferrall et al., 2010).  Teachers can take these skills and direct them in a way the student can further her academic progress.  Channel that manipulation into a positive method.

These are only two of the many ways a teacher can build positive relationship with difficult students, thus producing a positive classroom climate.  The one thing that you should get out of this post, however, is that RELATIONSHIPS ARE IMPORTANT TO STUDENTS.  How they feel about you as a teacher and as a person can greatly affect how they perform in your classroom.

Beaty-O'Ferrall, M. E., Green, A., & Hanna, F. (2010). Classroom Management Strategies for Difficult Students: Promoting Change through Relationships. Middle School Journal. 41(4), 4-11.