Types of Engagement that Teachers Could Exploit to Win the Battle with Gadgets

  • Teachers, as I have mentioned in my notes multiple times before, have lost their ability to capture the attention of children.
    • It’s not necessarily a negative thing that children are captivated by what interests them. Some of them, though not many, might, as a result, develop innovations or discover something previously unknown.
    • However, the majority of them will squander their time on aimless scrolling, and some will doomscroll for the rest of their lives.
    • This is what intrigues me: how can I, as a teacher, reclaim their attention, bring them back into the classroom, and entice them to participate in the activities I have planned for them?
  • It turns out that some researchers have already uncovered an answer to this question.
    • They identified three potential types of engagement and consequently suggested strategies to cultivate them in children:
      • Behavioral
      • Emotional
      • Cognitive
    • q Engagement includes on-task behavior, but it also emphasizes the pivotal role of students’ emotions, cognition, and voice. When engagement encompasses the full spectrum of on-task behavior, positive emotions, invested cognition, and personal voice, it functions as the engine for learning and development.Β Page 108
  • In this context, researchers define engagement as students’ capacity to sustain their focus on the instructional components of the lesson. In short, can they adhere to the instructions that the teacher provides for the task at hand?
    • The dynamics of engagement levels are exceedingly complex and depend on numerous factors, such as the students’ current emotional state, their level of fatigue, the time of year, and the challenges they face both at school and at home.
    • Despite this complexity, the following strategies might help to enhance the level of engagement in the classroom:
      • Maintain high energy in the classroom.
      • Don’t provide all the information; leave something to the imagination.
      • Leverage the student’s self-system, allowing them to make choices in such a way that they ultimately choose what you’ve planned for them. This is the illusion of decision-making. Bear in mind that decision-making is a powerful mechanic often utilized in highly engaging games like CS:GO
      • Keep them under mild stress. The pressure of time is an effective way to achieve this; simply display a countdown indicating the time they have left.
      • Introduce mild controversy. Present something paradoxical or debatable and monitor their responses. Finally, foster light competition, which can be facilitated through group dynamics.

BIO

Keywords:

Related:

Reference: