Non Teacher Mentors and Their Influence on Student Academic Engagement University City High School Sheenal Deo.

Non Teacher Mentors and Non Teacher Mentors and Their Influence on Student Their Influence on Student

Academic EngagementAcademic Engagement

University City High SchoolSheenal Deo

Student engagement, Student engagement, defineddefined

Engagement refers to student’s active participation in learning activity. (Reeve, 2013)

Engagement can be assessed by separating behaviors/responses into three categories:

Self regulatory strategies (Planning, Monitoring)

On task interactions

Achievement (Legrain, Radel, Sarrazin, & Wild, 2010)

Benefits of Benefits of Engagement in Engagement in

AcademicsAcademicsHigh engagement leads to

More success

Intrinsic Motivation

Completion

All of which contribute to more opportunities in the future. (Lee & Reeve, 2013; Reeve, 2013)

What affects Student What affects Student Engagement?Engagement?

Motivation and Agency (Intrinsically motivated students want to exercise their agency more)

Transactional engagement: Student- teacher interactions

Institutional Support: Conductive learning environment

Active Citizenship: Collaboration between students and institutions on challenging social beliefs and norms.

(Leache & Zepke, 2010)

Effectiveness of Effectiveness of Student- Teacher Student- Teacher

InteractionsInteractionsStudent- teacher interactions shown to

produce more engagement behaviors from students

Influence student’s motivation and self efficacy (Legrain, Radel, Sazzarin, Wilde, 2010; Leache & Zepke, 2010)

Student InteractionsStudent Interactions

Teachers

Non Teacher Mentors (Peers, Volunteers, etc.)

Adolescent Adolescent RelationshipsRelationships

Adolescents pay more attention to advice from peers, or non authority figures.

Trust

(Leache & Zepke, 2010; Sagayadevan & Jeyaraj, 2010)

Individual Influences Individual Influences on Engagementon Engagement

Self- Efficacy

Motivation

(Reeve, 2013; Lee & Reeve, 2013; Dias, Moreira, Vaz & Vaz, 2013)

Purpose of this StudyPurpose of this Study

To evaluate the relationship between non teacher mentors and students and its impact on engagement.

ParticipantsParticipants28 high school students ( 18 males and 10 females)

19 student mentees, 9 non teacher mentors

ages 14-17 years old

University City High School

Diverse in ethnicities and SES

MethodMethod

Participant Observations

Event Sampling

Interviews

ResultsResults

Students displayed two main engagement behaviors within their interactions with non teacher mentors:

Monitoring

On task Interactions

DeductionDeductionTrend 1: The amount of time spent interacting with mentors were positively associated with engagement.

With consistent, directed focus, the student was more likely to ask engaged questions because they were consistently prompted.

Trend 2: Student’s self efficacy is influenced by and influences, engagement

Comprehensive (Monitoring) Inquiries were accompanied by reassurring praises.

More questions---> more praises BUT more praises---> less questions being asked.

Monitoring---> Monitoring---> ComprehensionComprehension

A majority of responses from students during interactions were comprehensive questions:

“Am I doing this the right way?”

“Is this the right answers?”

“So because of this, the answer means....”

Monitoring & Self Monitoring & Self EfficacyEfficacyMonitoring inquiries coupled with motivation

praises.

“That’s exactly right! Good Job at seeing that.”

“Well, you were almost right, awesome try, let’s try it a different way this time..... Wow, you really improved fast on that problem.”

Interviews and observations concurred that when students reported being more comfortable in their abilities, they asked less questions. However, they report only becoming more comfortable after thorough praising, which only occurs through interacting more initially.

Factors which Factors which Influence InteractionsInfluence Interactions

Social Environment and comfortability

Mentor to student ratio

Hypothesis was Hypothesis was SupportedSupportedStudents reported engaging and interacting

with mentor more than teacher.

Mentors reported higher level of engagement with themselves than with teachers, from the students. Observations concurred.

As assumed, students reported paying more attention with mentors when they trust them more, like they do peers.

The results showed that students who engaged with their mentors more, showed advantages similar to those gained from student- teacher interactions

ImplicationsImplicationsDue to the increasing student to teacher ratio in classrooms, utilizations of different resources to breech this gap could significantly increase academic achievement and success.

Breeching social norms between teacher and students to accommodate a more mutually respectful relationship could lead to more student engagement. This increases transactional engagement. (Leache & Zepke, 2010)

More trust/ comfortability----> higher student engagement

LimitationsLimitationsUnequal mentor to student ratios.

Not all students from same community surrounding University City.

Assessment of engagement limited to three factors--- but there are multiple ways to assess student engagement.

Future DirectionsFuture Directions

Longitudinal study

Experimental design: Mentor group vs non mentor group

Use 1:1 ratio between mentor and students.

Questions?Questions?