• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Advertising
  • Write for Us
  • Job Board
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
    • Consulting
    • Advertising
  • Shop
    • Books
    • Shirts

The Educators Room logo

  • Start Here
    • Impact Statements: Teacher Expertise
    • Newsletter
  • Browse Topics
    • Content Strategies
      • Literacy
      • Mathematics
      • Social Studies
      • Educational Technology
      • ELL & ESOL
      • Fine Arts
      • Special Education
      • Popular Topics
        • Teacher Self-Care
        • Instructional Coach Files
        • Common Core
        • The Traveling Teacher
        • The Unemployed Teacher
        • The New Teacher Chronicles
        • Book Review
        • Grade Levels
          • Elementary (K-5)
          • Middle (6-8)
          • Adult
          • New Teacher Bootcamp
          • Hot Button Topics
            • Menu Item
              • Principals' Corner
              • Charter Schools
              • Confessions of a Teacher
              • Interviews
              • The State of Education
              • Stellar Educator of the Week
            • Menu
              • How to Fix Education
              • Featured
              • Ask a Teacher
              • Teacher Branding
              • Current Events
  • Podcasts
  • Courses
    • Practicing Self-Care to Avoid Teacher Burnout- An 8 Week Course
    • Becoming An Educational Consultant
    • Teacher Branding 101:Teachers are The Experts
    • The Learning Academy
    • Books
    • Shirts
  • Education in Atlanta
  • Teacher Self-Care
  • The Coach's Academy
menu icon
go to homepage
subscribe
search icon
Homepage link
  • Advertising
  • Write for Us
  • Job Board
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact
    • Consulting
    • Advertising
  • Shop
    • Books
    • Shirts
×

October 27, 2015 Ask a Teacher

Increasing Student Engagement through Belongingness and Cognitive Rigor

  • About the Author
  • Latest Posts

About Teresa

Teresa Cooper is a 30-something divorced mom and teacher from North Carolina. She has a Masters of Science in Education for Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment from Walden University and a BA in Psychology with a minor in Creative from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Having struggled with anxiety and depression most of her life and later having birthed a child with autism, she is passionate about spreading awareness and acceptance of mental illness and autism. After 13 years in education, she has a wealth of knowledge to share on education and bonding with children.
  • PTSD in Teachers: Yes, It's Real! - August 19, 2018
  • Teacher Anxiety: How to Cope With Anxiety Under Stress - July 29, 2018
  • Depression Kills Teachers if Left Untreated: It Should Not Kill Their Careers - July 23, 2018
  • Amidst Declining Mental Health in Teachers, What Can Administrators Do? - June 30, 2018
  • 5 Things I'd Tell Myself in My Earlier Teaching Years - October 15, 2017
  • How Class Dojo Saves My Sanity Daily - October 1, 2017
  • Surviving the School Year: Game of Thrones Style - August 27, 2017
  • What to Change Behavior? Start With Class Meetings in Special Education - August 20, 2017
  • When Your Administrator Doesn't Like You - July 3, 2017
  • Conquering Teacher Biases Against Disabilities: Important Strategies - May 8, 2017

As a middle school teacher, the battle to gain and then hold the attention of students in the classroom is hard won. According to Christensen, Fulmer, Kackar-Cam, Trucano, and Turner (2014), middle school is when lack of engagement increases for many students. As a consequence for this disengagement, students will begin to exhibit disruptive behaviors, isolation, and/or a downward progression in their academic achievement (Christensen et al.) which is why tackling this issue has become a personal priority. Working with a high poverty middle school, I see the issue of lack of engagement occur more often than ever before, so I aim to increase achievement gains for the students on my seventh grade team. With the belief that all student can learn, my research has shown that through a sense of belonging and through increased cognitive rigor, teachers can increase student engagement to optimal levels.

[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent="yes" overflow="visible"][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type="1_1" background_position="left top" background_color="" border_size="" border_color="" border_style="solid" spacing="yes" background_image="" background_repeat="no-repeat" padding="" margin_top="0px" margin_bottom="0px" class="" id="" animation_type="" animation_speed="0.3" animation_direction="left" hide_on_mobile="no" center_content="no" min_height="none"]Want to increase student engagement? Learn how here! Click To Tweet

Without a sense of belonging in the classroom, research has shown that students can withdraw and feel disconnected from their learning environment. According to Christensen et al. (2014), “belongingness” is when students feel the need to “establish close relationships” with those around them, and increasing a sense of belonging in the classroom helps students feel more engaged. The relationships students build between themselves and both their peers and teachers should remain positive with a feeling that others care about them in order for belongingness to occur (Christensen et al.). For example, if a student feels liked by his classmates and feels as if he has meaningful friendships, that student is more likely to engage both socially and academically in the classroom. In order to create this sense of belonging, teachers should not only encourage but model respectfulness in the classroom while teaching students how to work together in a productive way (Christensen et al.).

In my classroom, I ensure students feel respect by demonstrating I care for them while also teaching them how to how they care about one another. I also began utilizing the “I-message” approach outlined by Kottler, Kottler, and Zehm (2005), which is where I decrease feelings of judgement by stating how I think or feel about behaviors that I do not like to happen in my classroom while firmly stating that I would like the behaviors to discontinue. These strategies help battle what Jones, Jones, and Wells (2014) call “resistance,” which is when students and teachers do not work well together because of ineffective interpersonal interactions. Resistance is shown through arguing, unwillingness to accept responsibility, inattentiveness, side-tracking conversations on purpose, or lack of responsiveness to communication (Jones et al.).

However, empathy, which is a person’s ability to understand and feel another person’s emotional response to a situation, combined with lack of judgement can help facilitate changes that will lead to increased classroom engagement (Jones et al.). When students feel respected, cared about, and understood, a sense of belongingness will develop that allows for cooperative learning groups. These groups help students develop better attitudes toward their peers and toward content, which increases the amount of effort they put into learning (Christensen et al.). Thus, a sense of belonging is the start to a more engaging classroom environment, but belongingness alone is often not enough to engage students.

In order for students to feel more engaged to the content we attempt to teach them, they must feel appropriately challenged. In a study conducted by Neace, Paige, and Sizemore (2013), researchers found that an increased “depth of knowledge” led to a corresponding increase in student engagement. In other words, the more challenging or rigorous the curriculum became for students, the more they appeared to be engaged in learning. This finding is echoed by Christensen et al. (2014), as they discussed how self-efficacy, or competence, plays a large role in student engagement, as students with a higher self-efficacy will more likely set learning goals, use the most effective learning strategies, observe their own comprehension, and evaluate their own progress, leading to increased student engagement. One of the ways that Christensen et al. suggest will increase competence is to ensure students are provided with appropriately rigorous activities while providing the right amount of scaffolding and “informational feedback.” As students complete more rigorous learning activities, they will become more and more competent with these activities, especially if provided with more open-ended questioning and opportunities for learning that mistakes help inform the classroom and are just as valuable as the right answers. In my classroom, we engage in conversations about the reasoning students use to get to an answer and then students are provided with the opportunity to analyze math problem to determine where a mistake may have occurred if applicable. These opportunities, according to Christensen et al. will encourage students to make an effort and persist even when tasks become challenging. As students attend to more cognitively rigorous tasks, they will, according to Neace at al., engagement more with the content, which will increase the achievement levels of all students.

The middle school years are full of all sorts of changes for students, but one change I do not want to see happening in my classroom is a decrease in student engagement. Lack of student engagement leads to lower achievement gains, so in order for my students to learn at the most optimal levels, increasing engagement is the way to go. As stated in research by a variety of authors, two ways to increase engagement are to increase a sense of belongingness in the classroom and to increase the cognitive rigor. In order to monitor the effectiveness of my approach, I will utilize student surveys to gauge sense of belonging as well as how challenged they feel in the classroom. As students feel more connected to the classroom and more efficacious, their levels of engagement will rise and their gains will be well worth the work.

 

References

Christensen, A., Fulmer S. M., Kackar-Cam, H. Z., Trucano, M., & Turner, J. C. (2014). Enhancing students’ engagement: Report of a 3-year intervention with middle school teachers. American Educational Research Journal, 51(6), 1196-1224. doi:10.3102/000283121532515

Jones, A., Jones, S. C., & Wells, H. (2014). Teaching reluctant students: using the principles and techniques of motivational interviewing to foster better student-teacher interactions. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 51(2), 175-184. doi:10.1080/14703297.2013.778066

Kottler, E., Kottler, J. A. & Zehm, S. J. (2005). On being a teacher: The human dimension (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Neace, W. P., Paige, D. D., & Sizemore, J. M. (2013). Working inside the box: Exploring the relationship between student engagement and cognitive rigor. NASSP Bulletin, 97(2), 105-123. doi:10.1177/0192636512473505[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Related posts:

Top 5 Things Every Teacher Should Do Before School Starts Default ThumbnailThe Museum Trip - The Other Side Default ThumbnailBuilding Self-Esteem: The Secret Ingredient to Reaching Your Learning Disability Student Inquiry Based Research For John Steinbeck's Novel 'The Pearl'
« The Difference between Character Education and Indoctrination
Five Important Habits for Teachers »

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

The Educator's Room was launched in 2012 to amplify the voice of educators. To date, we have over 45+ writers from around the world and boast over twelve million page views. Through articles, events, and social media we will advocate for honest dialogue with teachers about how to improve public education. This mission is especially important when reporting on education in our community; therefore, we commit our readers to integrity, accuracy, and independence in education reporting. To join our mailing list, click here.

What we do

At The Educator's Room, we focus on amplifying and honoring the voice of educators as experts in education. To date, we have over 40 staff writers/teachers from around the world.

Popular Posts

  • A Q&A with Baltimore Teachers Union President, Diamonté Brown
  • 6 Reasons to Use Read-Alouds Daily
  • The Secret Ingredients of Lesson Planning
  • The Exhaustion of Black Educators on Another "Day After"

Featured On

Buy Our Books/Courses

How to Leave Your Job in Education

Practicing Self-Care to Avoid Teacher Burnout

Using Your Teacher Expertise to Become an Educational Consultant

Check out our books on teaching and learning!

The Learning Academy

Footer

↑ back to top

About

  • Privacy Policy
  • Disclaimer
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Accessibility Policy

Newsletter

  • Sign Up! for emails and updates

Contact

  • Contact
  • Services
  • Media Kit
  • FAQ

 

Copyright © 2021 The Educator's Room.