BEST PRACTICES FOR STUDENT ABSENTEEISM & ESL - ISSA Project

BEST PRACTICES FOR

STUDENT ABSENTEEISM & ESL

Lect. Dr. Figen KARAFERYE,

[email protected] Kutahya Dumlupinar University

KUTAHYA DUMLUPINAR UNIVERSITY

ISSA – IMPROVING SOLUTIONS FORSTUDENT ABSENTEEISM

FOSTERING ACADEMICIAN – STUDENT INTERACTIONTHROUGH THE USE OF

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE ELEMENTS AS PREVENTION OF STUDENT

ABSENTEEISM

• Following the Training of

Trainers Learning Activity in

Barcelona M&M Centre,

as the team of trainers in DPU,

we prapared a workshop-content

based on the training in Barcelona

and its outputs:

The Manual and the Teacher

Training Handbook.

WHO WERE THE PARTICIPANTS?

• Teaching staff is consisted of academicians with different educational backgrounds, such as

• in the Faculty of Education: Academicians have their graduate and/or postgraduate degree in teaching,

which means they have training in teaching methodology, pedagogy, and so on.

• in the Faculty of Engineering/Economics/Applied Sciences/Humanities: Mostly, academicians do not

have any training in teaching methodology and pedagogies prior to their roles in the university. They may

attend teaching methodology or pedagogy workshops/courses if they decide. Or they improve themselves by

diagnosing their weaknesses and strengths throughout their career.

• in the School of Foreign Languages: Academicians usually have their graduate and/or postgraduate

degree in teaching, or they have attended a pedagogical formation program prior to the profession. They have

mentoring programs in the school and PD activities each term in a year.

• In the faculties above, PD activities may occur, too, but not regularly.

• The aim of the workshop we organized:

To use emotional

intelligence techniques

in class to foster

academician-student

interaction

To support ourcolleagues to becomemore self-resilient tocope with burnout

syndrome with the useof the techniques

To decrease studentabsenteeism by fostering

academician-studentbonding

TOPICS COVERED INTHE WORKSHOP

Self-awareness (Connected Not Isolated)

Interpersonal awareness (Not Me But Us)

Coaching (Not Advice But Support)

Coping with burn-out syndrome (Not Weary But

Energetic)

Mindfulness (Live The Moment, Feel The Moment)

ACTIVITIES IN THE WORKSHOP

• Making eye contact with a participant (then the number increases upto 4 participants at a

time) & holding the eye contact till the point it is impossible

WHY?

The data gathered in Output 1 indicate that students have

difficulties in adjusting school and they tend to make absenteeism

which sometimes results in ESL.

The more the persons involved in schools and classrooms have the

actual possibility of interacting on the basis of direct eye-contact,

the more they are able to view themselves as learning communities

of individuals that interact based on mutual recognition in which all

are seen

ACTIVITIES IN THEWORKSHOP

Think about these headings – how did you

feel & what were you upto when you were

at the age of (14) 18?

Family

Friends

Love & Relationships

Social activities & Hobbies

ACTIVITIES IN THE WORKSHOP

WHY?

To develop empathy and emotional connections between

academicians & students

Research (O1) shows us that a positive emotional connection

between students and teachers is a necessary fact when it comes

to ensuring students’ school attendance in a self-motivated way.

The most repeated complaint from the students’ side during the

interviews (Qualitative phase of the research) on student

absenteeism & ESL was the lack of empathy and support from

teachers in general.

ACTIVITIES IN THE WORKSHOP

What would you say to

your 14-year-old self?

ACTIVITIES IN THE WORKSHOP

• « I’m all ears, please tell » (Activity in pairs)

WHY?

To use coaching techniques (elements of the coaching

interview applied to education and including

interpersonal awareness training, not just with verbal

language but also with the use of body language)

To make positive influence on others &

To change from indifferent to engaged by open-ended

question-making.

ACTIVITIES IN THE WORKSHOP

• After the eye-contact activity, the academicians

shared the most frequent problems related to

students that they encountered in their work life.

1

1 & 3

32 & 3

All

1 & 2

2

Project: Let’s Do This!

• The academicians (in different groups) chose a problem

to create solutions through a project design.

Project: Let’s Do This!

Project: Let’s Do This!

Project: Let’s Do This!

PDCA

Cycle

Plan

Do

Check

Act

AWARENESS QUESTIONNAIRE (PRE-TEST & POST-TEST), SATISFACTION QUESTIONNAIRE, OBSERVATION & FEEDBACK

• Before the workshop, we asked the participants to complete the awareness questionnaire on teacher &

student interaction (prepared by us).

• The questions were designed on the titles & activities covered in the workshop (Intra- & Inter-personal

awareness, empathy, coaching, group dynamics, self-resilience against burnout syndrome, ...) to measure

how aware they were of the emotional elements in class.

• After the workshop, the same questionnaire was conducted again to see if there was a change in their

awareness of these crucial elements.

• Also, a satisfaction questionnaire was completed (prepared by us) to learn how satisfied they were with

the experience.

• This workshop was held at the beginning of the semester, the academicians have been teaching; by

observing the academics’ evaluations of their classes in meetings and through informal interviewing with

some of them (convenience sampling technique), their ideas & experiences about emotional elements in

their class management are taken down for further evaluation.

FINDINGS

• After the workshop on emotional elements in class to foster academician – student interaction;

• Interaction has become one of their priorities in class.

• When they start feeling they are disconnected to what they are actually doing at the time in class (such as

because of the workload of that day/deadlines), they started getting rid of the idea more quickly.

• The idea that effective communication between the academic & student can help decrease student absenteeism

didn’t make much sense to some academics before the workshop, after the workshop the same academics

ranked the statement much higher.

• It is stated that the things they had thought that they were doing OK were not that good enough.

• Open ended questions were answered with more detailed and multi-perspective ways in the post-test.

Ex: How would you ensure that individual differences are respected in group activities?

1st time answer: Considering multi-intelligence theories; 2nd time: The answer included respecting their

interests, creating more opportunities to support them with group dynamics, etc.

FINDINGS

• That much importance of eye-contact in class was a novel idea to a few of the

participants.

• It is stated that they really desire to attend this kind of human psychology-related

interactive workshops more often.

• More workshops on coaching techniques are desired to be able to set the tone of

support but not giving advice during a talk -since this was also a novel practice to

most of them.

• It is repeatedly stated to provide the same workshop to more academics at the

university since the theoretical knowledge - scientific side of teaching is in the centre

of teaching in most of the classes at university.

• The use of self-awareness & interpersonal awareness in class management is still

stated as a refreshing & dynamic tool in class that they pay more attention to and

enjoy (info from interviewing).

THANK YOU

[email protected]