The E Factor - Engagement

Presenters: Jill Lunn, Noline Skeet / Strand: Vision & Leadership / Theme: Vision & Leadership / Target Level: All

The focus on the session was on the "big" questions:

• How can we use 'student voice' to get students really engaged in their learning so academic results go up, and inappropriate behaviour and absenteeism go down?
  
• How does the New Zealand Curriculum support school leaders to make the changes necessary?

We got a taste of research in the area of engagement. The work of four researchers was briefly reference and discussed.
In reference to the work of the researchers we were asked to consider questions like:

• What does power look like in your school?
• How is this demonstrated in your school?
• How are families involved in nurturing learning?
• What do these concepts look like in your school?

The researchers consider where:

William Glasser 1998 - Engagement was linked to four factors.

1. Love and belonging
2. Power
3. Freedom
4. Fun

Russell Bishop 2003

• Manaakitanga - caring for students as culturally located human beings above all else.
• Whakawhanaungatanga - the nurturing of respectiful and collaborative relationships between all parties around student learning.
• Ako - the promotion of effective and reciprocal teaching and learning relationships where everyone is a learner and teacher.
• Mana motuhake - caring by teachers for the academic success and performance of their students.

David Hargreaves 2005

Personalised learning and deep learning

Involving student voice, assessment for learning and learning to learn

John Hattie 2009

12 top (ranked) aspects that have the greatest impact on student achievement

1. Self-report grades (student)
2. Piagetian programmes (student)
3. Providing formative evaluation (teaching)
4. Micro teaching (teacher)
5. Acceleration (school)
6. Classroom behaviour (school)
7. Comprehensive interventions for learning disabled students (teaching)
8. Teacher clarity (teacher)
9. Reciprocal teaching (teaching)
10. Feedback (teaching)
11. Teacher-student relationships (teacher)
12. Spaced v mass practice (teaching) spacing the practice of skills over a long period of time as opposed to teaching the topic only in an isolated unit of study.