Calibrate academic task design to individual students and strengthen self-efficacy and peer support as malleable protective factors for momentary engagement¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 2 claims (2 for) · 1 study (1 associational), q2 · 0 of 1 report an effect size · 2 claims rest on one study

Description¶

The article's implications statement recommends that "The design of academic tasks should ideally be calibrated for individual students in the classroom to promote momentary engagement", because the same task provokes many different engagement responses. It further identifies that "Peer support for learning and social inclusion, and individual self-efficacy, are important and malleable protective factors for momentary engagement in classwork". Teachers can therefore plan tasks with awareness that attentive students may still be disaffected, and invest in peer support structures and students' self-efficacy beliefs alongside task design.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Awareness that a single standardized task can produce divergent engagement profiles within one classroom

Constraints¶

• Findings come from one ten-minute English grammar literacy task in two low-income Dublin secondary schools, so task-specific generalization to other tasks and settings is not established by this study

Target Learners¶

• Adolescent secondary school students in low-income schools

Target Learning Goals¶

• Promoting momentary engagement and reducing disaffection during academic tasks

Affordances¶

• Momentary Engagement Dynamic System Micro Grain

Claims¶

• Lower academic self-efficacy is associated with membership of three less engaged momentary-engagement profiles and lower peer support with two, while educational goals and family support do not differ across the four profiles tested [+W]
• Seven profiles of momentary (dis)engagement emerge among adolescents completing the same ten-minute literacy task [+W]

Related Strategies¶

• Design instructional environments to foster positive academic emotions: improve instruction quality, grant calibrated autonomy, match expectations to capabilities, increase success opportunities, and foster cooperative interaction structures
• Develop complementary LD interventions that strengthen promotive and protective factors alongside interventions remediating core weaknesses
• Customize interventions to students' unique motivational and task-behavioral patterns

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Symonds, J. E., Schreiber, J. B., & Torsney, B. M. (2021). Silver linings and storm clouds: Divergent profiles of student momentary engagement emerge in response to the same task. Journal of Educational Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000605