Identifying students’ engagement and motivation characteristics -

Abstract

Middle primary (8 to 11 years) and early secondary (12 to 15 years)

Promoting student engagement, participation and interest in learning mathematics has long been a concern of mathematics teachers and educators. Middle and early secondary school can be challenging times for students as they transition through adolescence, experiencing changes in their physical, cognitive, social and psychological characteristics. Adolescents are also vulnerable to the neurocognitive processes that can affect intrinsic motivation and goal setting. This phase of schooling also coincides with increased expectations for students to reason and demonstrate their thinking in mathematics and may reveal insecure understandings of concepts, and worsen fragile notions of self-efficacy and control over learning outcomes. These factors may threaten student engagement in mathematics learning, leading to disengagement (procrastination and self-handicapping), feelings of uncertainty, anxiety, and fear of failure.

Understanding student engagement characteristics, and underlying motivational and affective factors that influence individual students' behaviours, emotions, and cognition is crucial. Teachers know their students well and take notice of their behavioural and emotional engagement, however, more subtle emotions and cognitive engagement are harder to identify and more difficult to describe. Paying attention to, and valuing teachers’ understanding of the engagement is essential so that effective tools for capturing engagement are relevant in practice.

This workshop will explore what teachers believe about and describe student engagement and introduce the ORRSEM Teacher Tool which can be used in classrooms for observing, recording and reporting student engagement and motivation in mathematics.