SRPING BFREAK - A TIME FOR REFLECTION AND FORWARD THINKING ABOUT WHAT REALLY MATTERS AT SCHOOL

Schools and teachers who are committed to continuous improvement in their performance usefully take time at this time of the year both to reflect on the term just gone, and also to begin planning for the new academic year. In particular, they will reflect individually and collectively on what worked well, as well as on what they found challenging. From these thoughts and reflections will emerge new ideas and better ways of facing down the challenges that face every school, every teacher and every student every day.

Term 3 in most schools, especially secondary schools, sees a major focus on assessment of student learning. Year 12s are taking their last classes and typically have written practice scripts in preparation for their final examinations. Year 11 students, notably in NSW, are completing assessments at the end of their courses in their penultimate year at school, preparing for the commencement of Year 12 studies before year’s end. Year 10s are fine-tuning their preferred subject choices for Year 11, choices based at least in part on Term 3 assessments of how their learning has progressed across the curriculum in their various courses. Younger students too will have been assessed in various ways as their junior secondary curses unfold.

Common to students in all grades will be the experience of not doing as well as they should, or as well as they had hoped. For some, these academic setbacks are a bigger issue than they are for others, and a multi-disciplinary team of researchers Dr Keiko Bostwick (UNSW), Prof Andrew J Martin (UNSW), Emma Burns (Macquarie University) and Assoc Prof Rebecca Collie (Sydney University), has been investigating what schools can do to help students at all levels cope with academic setbacks (in What helps students cope with academic setbacks? Our research shows a sense of belonging at school is?key, in The Conversation AU, 19 Sept 2023).

?Bostwick et al ?regard academic challenges and difficulties as inevitable parts of attending and participating at school – indeed, the authors state bluntly that this is how students learn. It is a truism in education that children of all ages learn far more from failing to meet the challenges of an assessment task or a test than they do from succeeding, but nevertheless, how schools manage their students’ failure to succeed in their learning has a highly significant impact on their sense of self, their self-efficacy, and their ongoing mental health. According to Bostwick and her colleagues, researchers – and by extension, schools - have long been interested in the ways students navigate these challenges and how to help them cope better.

Recent research has focused on the concept of academic buoyancy, or everyday resilience at school, Bostwick et al assert, adding that this is about the students’ capacity to handle everyday setbacks and challenges, amongst which might be experiencing negative feedback on an assessment or simply feeling helpless in facing competing study deadlines and schoolwork demands.

Of course, the concept of adolescent disengagement is not foreign to schools nor to secondary school teachers. Virtually from the time studying adolescence began as a thing, scholars have noted that adolescent anomie is characteristic. Anomie, alienation, angst, sturm und drang – these are all readily identifiable typical adolescent experiences. What is crucial is that schools foster and nurture the capacity in adolescents to move beyond feeling left out of things, and moving beyond adolescent anomie and angst rests on helping them to become resilient and self-reliant, as well as enhancing their own self-efficacy.

Bostwick and her colleagues claim that resilient students tend to have more positive academic outcomes, including making greater effort with their work, having better study skills and enjoying school more than students who are less resilient. They point out that resilience is underpinned by personal attributes such as confidence. But, Bostwick and her colleagues affirm, more than just identifying personal characteristics and attributes of resilient students, we need more understanding about what school-related factors are involved in students’ resilience and what schools can do to build their students’ resilience.

Their research thus centred upon what other factors impact students’ resilience, which they identified through a comprehensive survey of high school students in schools around New South Wales.

The research

The study was based on responses from 71,861 high school students in 292 NSW government schools who completed the annual Tell Them From Me student survey organised by the state’s Department of Education. Students’ responses were collected at two points one year apart: once at the beginning of the 2018 school year when students were in Years 7 to 11 and then a year later in 2019 when they were in Years 8 to 12. Schools were in metropolitan, rural and regional areas.

Bostwick et al indicate that one of their main aims was to find out whether students’ perceptions of different types of support in their school would influence their resilience one year later. Different types of support included academic and emotional support from teachers; the students’ sense of school belonging; and behavioural expectations in the classroom.

We looked at the role of support factors in two ways, the authors explain: first, we looked at how support for individual students was associated with students’ resilience. For example, does a student who perceives greater academic support from their teacher, regardless of the school they are in, report greater resilience one year later? Second, we investigated the relationship between support at the whole-school level and whole-school resilience.

In particular, the authors point out that their research looked at what helps students bounce back from academic setbacks, such as a poor mark or competing deadlines.?

The findings

Students’ sense of school belonging stood out as the most notable factor underlying their development of resilience, and was important at the individual student level and also at the whole-school level, Bostwick et al aver. When individual students felt a greater sense of belonging to their school, they tended to also report greater resilience one year later. Then too, when a school had a higher proportion of students reporting a sense of belonging, it demonstrated higher school-average resilience one year later.

There was also evidence of a reciprocal relationship between students’ sense of belonging and their resilience, the authors continue, suggesting increases in school belonging were associated with greater resilience one year later and vice versa.

What was also notable was that these findings were largely consistent across a range of different contexts, including schools of different sizes, in different locations, with different gender compositions, with varying levels of academic selectivity, with a range of socioeconomic status and with varying levels of students’ academic ability.

Importantly, the authors attest that the similarity in the findings across contexts suggests targeting these areas of support could benefit students’ resilience in a wide range of academic settings.

Why is this so?

Bostwick and her colleagues show that if students feel like they belong at their school, they will feel less isolated if there is a problem, and thus, when students are faced with everyday academic setbacks and challenges, having a strong sense of school belonging helps to protect students from stress and negative feelings about themselves, their work or their school. This is because students feel less socially isolated at times of personal adversity and realise that they have options and opportunities to seek support from their peers and from caring, supportive teachers.

Furthermore, the authors emphasise that their evidence of the reciprocal relationship among these school-based factors and the development of individual resilience also suggests that if schools and systems facilitate a greater sense of belonging for students, they could have long-lasting effects on students’ resilience as they positively feed into each other over time.

How then can we boost belonging?

Bostwick and her colleagues offer a number of suggestions as to how schools can develop a stronger sense of belonging at school. Helping students feel that they are known and valued as individual members of the school community is a fundamental first step. Schools that have really successful and effective pastoral and wellbeing structures and programs start ?from ensuring that staff members know the kids and then let the kids know that they care about them – they care about them as individuals, and demonstrate that they are genuinely interested in how they are going.

Helping students to feel safe and included in their school is a second way to promote a greater sense of belonging for students. This could include offering a range of extracurricular activities that cater to the broadest possible range of out of class areas of student interest – sporting and cultural activities, opportunities to participate in performing arts; and special interest activities help students to get involved and feel part of their school community. A further strong extra-curricular source of a sense of belonging and ‘usefulness’ for adolescents is provided by the opportunity for service learning or community service activities, where adolescents can gain an authentic sense of their capacity to make a genuine difference in the lives of other people.

Intentional, professional, whole-of staff anti-bullying and wellbeing programs also help students to feel safer and more comfortable in their schools, nurturing a sense of self-worth and thus of belonging. These kinds of programs also help students build and feel confident in their personal identities at school, Bostwick and her colleagues counsel.

Teaching students to be aware of and manage their emotions

There are also strategies for targeting students’ resilience directly, Bostwick et al observe, offering the example of teachers taking both the time to provide students with specific reasoning behind a poor assessment mark and also the time (in class or one-on-one) to help them understand and constructively respond to the challenging feedback. Taking time to explain to a student why s/he has not done as well as they might have hoped not only strengthens their academic capabilities, but also affirms them as individuals for whom the teacher actually cares and whom the teacher wants to do well. Teacher training institutions would do well to devote time in their courses on classroom management to assist student teachers to develop strong skills in how best to provide feedback to students, both positive and negative.

Students might also be taught to be aware of the thoughts, behaviours and emotions they have when they receive a disappointing result. They also need to be taught how best they might deal with their emotions by responding constructively, Bostwick et al advise. They suggest the teacher re-frames the event as a learning opportunity. After all, a time to seek out further information from a teacher is one way to focus on looking forward to self-improvement rather than wallowing in the wake of the disappointing result.

Amid ongoing concerns about young people’s mental health and wellbeing, fostering and nurturing academic resilience at school as an important personal attribute helps students to navigate their school careers positively and successfully, Bostwick and her colleagues conclude.

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