Interesting article written by Sharyn O'Neill on children in our schools.
Student success hangs on managing emotions
Sharyn O’Neill, theburningissue
June 5, 2012, 11:54 am
But parents place the highest priority on the personal and social skills developed in and out of school. They want their children to be happy, secure in themselves, self-confident and self-reliant. They want them to get along well with others and contribute to society.
Parents know that if their children can manage their emotions, tolerate frustration, persevere with difficult tasks and focus their attention they are more likely to succeed in whatever they do.
Yet we seem to be raising a generation of children where more and more have short attention spans, react impulsively and cannot delay gratification — they want what they want NOW!
The famous marshmallow experiment over 20 years ago illustrated how important the ability to delay gratification was to future success. In that study an adult told a group of four-year-olds that they could have one marshmallow now or, if they waited while the adult did something first, they could have several marshmallows later.
Those children who waited (about one-third of them) went on to do better in school and exhibit less antisocial behaviour later in life. They were also not as susceptible to drug use.
Yet teachers see increasing numbers of children who are distractible and impulsive to the point where it affects their learning. And they are seeing this from the very first years of school.
To gain a better understanding of this issue, in 2004 we initiated a ground-breaking research project undertaken by Edith Cowan University. Over 1000 students were followed for four years to learn more about the impact of these behaviours on school achievement.
The study found that, while there was a relatively small percentage of students whose behaviour was disruptive to the class, there was a surprisingly large percentage (about 20 per cent) of students who, while not being disruptive, were not engaged in learning. These students were described by their teachers as disinterested in their schoolwork, failing to come prepared for lessons, looking for distractions and tending to give up on tasks they found difficult.
Of all the unproductive student behaviour that teachers reported, the most common was inattentiveness. As a general rule, students who behaved unproductively performed in literacy and numeracy at a standard between one and two-year levels below their counterparts who behaved productively.
The message is clear: a lack of self-regulation by children really counts against them when it comes to educational achievement.
I am pleased the Commissioner for Children and Young People’s Thinker in Residence program is helping to focus attention on this issue and investigate how parents, schools and the broader community can work together to boost self-regulation in children.
It is often not recognised that the social-emotional side of learning is as important as the intellectual side. A student may be intellectually capable of mastering a particular task but does not succeed because they cannot manage their emotions and attention to engage properly with the task. Maybe they get distracted easily, give up as soon as it starts to get difficult, get bored quickly and frustrated because they can’t do it.
In schools, a huge effort by teachers goes into trying to find the most effective teaching practices to get each student to be successful. But, if students are not “available” because they cannot maintain engagement, then it is unlikely they will achieve their potential.
Diet, family stress, electronic games — whatever the causes, teachers feel the impact. They tell me they feel they are competing with a world that offers children constant stimulation and entertainment and a culture that does not value serious learning and the effort required to achieve success.
Teachers use a range of techniques to encourage children to persist, to make learning tasks as interesting and engaging as possible and to teach students to take small steps towards self-regulation and maturity.
A partnership between school and home is really needed here: it can’t all be left to teachers. If, before children reach school age, parents have guided them to gain control over their impulses, maintain attention on the task at hand, not expect immediate results, persevere and learn from failure, they will be providing great support for their children’s school success.
The State Government’s new child-parent centres will boost support to young children and their families. Some children will get specialist help at the centres while, in other cases, advice will be given to help parents understand what they can do to help their children become more self-regulating.
Sharyn O’Neill is director-general of the Department of Education
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