Student Engagement Mindsets
There are five mindsets. You may be tempted to silently label students instead of identifying mindsets and using them to guide your instruction. Reframe your thoughts if you catch yourself thinking, “That student is an agitator” or something similar. This contributes to bias, which can negatively affect students who are struggling (Friedrich, Flunger, Nagengast, Jonkmann, & Trautwein, 2015). Watch for and work against bias in yourself.
• Agitator mindset: Students with this mindset are at the far-left end of the engagement continuum (see figure I.2 on page 8). They are less engaged than their classmates. Students with the agitator mindset actively work against the teacher, are overtly disruptive, and chronically underperform.
• Retreater mindset: Students with this mindset are withdrawn. They don’t attempt work, but they do not disrupt others. They also chronically underperform.
• Probationer mindset: Students with this mindset do their work only when outside forces compel them. They never complete high-quality work. They work to avoid punishment.
• Aficionado mindset: These high-achieving students think of school as a game, and they play it well. They do exceptionally well. Extrinsic motivators (like earning high grades, making a positive impression, and winning awards) drive them to complete work and achieve accolades. Most educators identify with this mindset, so pay attention to whether you’re seeing through that lens as you read.
• Academician mindset: Students with this mindset sometimes have enough knowledge to teach content. They have an internal drive for learning in that content area, and it shows in their behaviors. They fully engage in learning and sometimes move beyond extrinsic motivators like grades or awards. Learning is their primary interest.
These are the roles our students play based on their engagement. Each mindset benefits from specific tactics to increase or keep motivation. Using those tactics can help you move students up the student engagement mindset continuum.
How Not to Apply the Mindsets
Many teachers think they see students with the aficionado and academician mindsets in honors classes; they think they see students with probationer and retreater mindsets in remedial classes; they think they see those with agitator mindsets in detention or suspension. This thinking is an oversimplification. Thinking this way gives educators results like spotty engagement and inconsistent student success. Let us recognize that our current approach might be creating or reinforcing the harmful student engagement mindsets.
Furthermore, separating students into different classes (tracking) or classroom groups (ability grouping) based on their engagement mindsets is not the best option.
• Separating and grouping students threatens to increase bias: A Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings (Loveless, 2013) report warns that “grouping students by ability, no matter how it is done, will inevitably separate students by characteristics that are correlated statistically with measures of ability, including race, ethnicity, native language, and class” (page 15). Groups like these already struggle in the classroom under the weight of bias (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2002).
• Tracking and grouping have negligible, and sometimes detrimental, effects: Research shows (Betts & Shkolnik, 2000; Lleras & Rangel, 2009), for instance, those “lower grouped for reading instruction learn substantially less, and higher-grouped students learn slightly more over the first few years of school, compared to students who are in classrooms that do not practice grouping” (Lleras & Rangel, 2009, p. 279).
Remember: the mindsets exist to guide instruction—not to pigeonhole students or enable misperceptions about their abilities. Some kids are in crisis, but it’s up to teachers to engage them.
The Student Engagement Mindset Continuum
Student engagement is a continuum from disengaged to highly engaged. Students can move either direction on that continuum depending on what they experience and choose. It can vary from subject to subject and teacher to teacher (Darr, 2012). There are common threads in the research on student engagement. For example, psychology professors’ Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci’s (2000a, 2000b) self-determination theory shows how students move from unmotivated to intrinsic motivation. Education researcher Phil Schlechty’s (2001) engagement framework highlights the behavioral manifestations of engagement, moving from rebellious to authentic. Finally, education professors Sitwad Saeed and David Zyngier’s (2012) complex model blends Ryan and Deci’s (2000a, 2000b) motivation work and Schlechty’s (2001) engagement framework to explain student engagement behavior and the motivation underneath. I have combined all this research with my own teaching experiences to develop specific engagement mindsets and put them into a continuum of disengaged to engaged.
As I begin describing student mindsets, it is important to remember three points.
1. These mindsets evolved from the existing body of social scientific research (Saeed & Zyngier, 2012; Schlechty, 2001). They are rooted in hard work researchers have done and published. Without their hard work, the student engagement mindsets would not exist.
2. My experiences as a student, teacher, principal, and parent drove my thinking when developing these mindsets.
3. The mindsets are only that. They are not actual students, and they are not labels for students. Students change behavior from class to class and day to day. I don’t condone labeling students. We are labeling behavior to identify positive and negative consequences. This student engagement model exists only to assist educators to help students grow.
Figure I.2 (page 8) shows the student engagement mindset continuum. Let me first explain it; then I will call attention to how important it is to address students with the agitator mindset and the retreater mindset. You can see, from left to right, the mindsets that are least to most engaged. The zone of critical need highlights those mindsets of students who need immediate attention—agitator and retreater. You can also see which possess the fixed and growth mindsets, which I’ll discuss further throughout the book and specifically in chapter 2 (page 27).
Figure I.2: Student engagement mindset continuum.
Special Attention for Agitator and Retreater Mindsets
The continuum points out the zone of critical need. Those with the agitator and retreater mindsets need immediate attention. These students are at the highest risk of dropout or academic failure in your school, the dangers of which are highlighted in chapter 2 (page 27). Note that students who underperform are capable of more than they’re accomplishing. The continuum indicates mindsets only—not potential. Sadly, these students in the zone of critical need will experience disciplinary problems, attendance issues, and social issues with other students and teachers (Appleton, Christenson, & Furlong, 2008). Unfortunately, the education system has few solutions for these students. Many times, they are suspended or fail out of school. Some districts have created alternative schools or programs. In the best cases, these placements offer alternative methods, like those in