Your responsibility for keeping students on-task and engaged in learning activities is compounded by the fact that each student is unique. What motivates one student to be on-task does not necessarily motivate another. What discourages one from being off-task may encourage the off-task behavior of another. As a practitioner of the complex art of teaching, you are confronted with more variables to manipulate concurrently than is expected in any other profession (Cangelosi, 1992; Eilam & Poyas, 2009).
The effectiveness of your strategies for leading students to be on-task and engaged in learning activities depends on how you interrelate with students as individuals and apply your understanding of their backgrounds. This is a major theme throughout this book and is the focus of Chapter 6. A wealth of studies from the fields of developmental psychology and multicultural education (see, for example, Heward, 2006, and Ormrod, 2006) provide the foundation.
Anticipate managing a classroom community of students with extreme differences with respect to the following variables—each of which has critical classroom-management implications.
• Interest in learning. You are interested in teaching your students, but you will be disappointed if you anticipate they will all be equally interested in learning. Children’s and adolescents’ interests in what schools offer range from obsessive avoidance to obsessive pursuit. Major challenges of teaching include
Implications from Studies in Developmental Psychology and Multicultural Education 35
(a) motivating otherwise disinterested students to learn and (b) preserving and fostering the enthusiasm of those who are already motivated to learn.
• Self-confidence. Some students view learning tasks as opportunities to acquire new abilities and skills. Others approach learning tasks as competitive situations in which their existing abilities and skills are challenged. Unlike the latter group, the former group is not burdened with the fear that mistakes will bring ridicule, so these students are willing to pursue perplexing tasks and to learn from their mistakes. The amount of effort students are willing to invest in a learning task is not only dependent on the value they recognize in the task; it also depends on their perception of the likelihood that they will successfully complete the task (Parsons, Hinson, & Sardo-Brown, 2001, pp. 289–290). Problem solving, discovering relationships, analyzing academic content, and interpreting com- munications are cognitive tasks requiring students to work through perplexing moments. Those who are not confident in their own abilities tend to stop working on the task as soon as they become perplexed; more confident students tolerate perplexity longer and are more likely to continue with the task.
• Perception of what is important. Adults tend to value schools as vehicles for preparing their children for the future. “Study hard, and you’ll be able to get a good job and make something of yourself when you’re grown,” a parent tells a child. However, most students are far more concerned with succeeding as chil- dren or adolescents than with succeeding as adults (Ormrod, 2006). Today seems more important than tomorrow. Thus, many of your students will need to recog- nize immediate benefits in what you are trying to teach them before they will be motivated to engage in your learning activities. There is tremendous varia- tion among what students consider immediately beneficial. For example, some students want to please their parents with their accomplishments; others find peer approval of their appearance far more important. Still others seek satisfac- tion within themselves and do not depend on outside approval or seek material rewards for their efforts. You may plan to use students’ desires for success to motivate them to attempt a task, but some may be too fearful of failure to make the attempt. Their desire for success is overcome by their desire to avoid failure (Santrock, 2001). In any case, each student is driven by a unique combination of motives based on what she or he finds important.
• Attitude toward school. Some of your students will greet you as their friend, expecting to benefit from the experiences you provide. Others arrive with little regard for how you might help them and view you as an authority figure who interferes with what they would prefer to be doing.
• Inclination to reason. Many of the learning activities you design for your stu- dents confront them with high-level cognitive tasks (e.g., inductive or deductive reasoning). Some students resist such challenges, whereas others welcome them. Whether you teach elementary, middle, or secondary school students, you will have to contend with a wide range of students’ penchants for various reasoning processes. Students who enjoy a history of successes with reasoning tasks are more likely to engage in high-level cognitive learning activities than those who come to you with a history of discouraging experiences.
• Prior achievements. Look at the initial chapters of a textbook designed for any grade level beyond the second. Note how the book begins with remedial material that overlaps the content of books for prior grades. Apparently, the author(s) rec- ognized that having been exposed to content in prior courses does not guarantee that content was learned by all students. Most of your students will have failed to learn some content at a level you consider a prerequisite for what you want to teach them. Learning gaps vary from student to student. Furthermore, many students, although lacking some remedial skills and abilities, will have already acquired understanding of some advanced topics you are expecting to introduce to them. Your assessments of students’ needs will detect differences among their motor skills as well as in their cognitive abilities. Of particular concern to most teachers are differences in students’ communication skills. Student engage- ment in most learning activities depends on them being able to both receive messages (e.g., by listening or reading) and send messages (e.g., by speaking or writing).
• Experiences on which you can build. Different students bring vastly differ- ent backgrounds to your classroom. Participating in sports, caring for younger children, repairing motors, tending gardens, working for money, traveling, expe- riencing major family upheavals, playing music, suffering from illnesses, and raising animals are only a few of the types of students’ experiences to which you can relate the things you teach, thus motivating their engagement.
• Home and social life. Children and adolescents are under continual domestic and social pressures. The parenting of your students will range from supportive to neglectful, from healthy to abusive, and from constant to absent. For most students, peer acceptance is of paramount concern (DeBaca, Figueredo, & Ellis, 2012; Ormrod, 2006). Some have friends who encourage their pursuits of learning and cooperation with your efforts. Others may perceive that they risk acceptance of those whose friendship they value most by being studious and cooperative with you. Some may be involved in gang-related activities or in fear for their personal safety. Although it is important that you understand the pressures and influences with which your students live, keep in mind that because students live with disadvantages (e.g., abusive parents), it does not mean that they cannot control their own behaviors, nor should it imply that you should expect less from them (Glasser, 2001; Pysch, 1991). However, variations in home and social life do create differences among students regarding such matters as how much time they have to devote to schoolwork, whether they have a place conducive to doing homework, and whether you can depend on their parents’ cooperation and support.
• Cultural background. Schools serve pluralistic societies bestowed with multi- ethnic, multicultural communities. Your understanding of cultural diversity will serve you well as you develop strategies for motivating students to be on-task and engaged in learning activities. The application of classroom management strate- gies from a multicultural perspective is a major focus of this book—especially Chapter 6.
• First language. More than 13% of students in U.S. public schools speak a non-English language at home; the English proficiency of these students varies