Leaving no child behind: The overlapping cases of drop-outs and talented teens

The two pieces that you will read for this class ask you to consider the school experiences and motivation of two sometimes overlapping groups: Gifted & talented students and students who drop out of school before graduation. We will discuss these readings using the frame of stage-environment fit: meeting adolescents needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence (remember Eccles, et al, Stefanou & co. and Laguardia?).

Csiksentmihalyi (chick-sent-me-high) et al 1993: Talented Teens

This chapter reports findings from a study of gifted adolescents using the "Experience Sampling Method," or ESM. Students wore pagers that beeped at 8 random times during their waking hours. Each time they were beeped, they agreed to fill out a short questionnaire about where they were, what they were doing, and how they felt. Their ratings of their own concentration, how much they wanted to be doing what they were doing (volition), mood, the levels of challenge and of their own skill in the activity were among the dimensions these teenagers rated. Then the researchers computed an individual average for each dimension and compared teens' ratings across the different kinds of activities they experienced. In the chapter, you will see graphs that represent responses to these rating scales: the horizontal line in the middle is the individual's average rating for that scale across all activities and times. Bars above that line show higher-than-average-for-that-person ratings, and below the line, lower-than-average ratings. In this way, the researchers were able to look for connections between various aspects of the activities and the adolscents' experiences of motivation, mood, and concentration.

From these data and interviews of the adolescents, the researchers identified patterns that may be useful to you as a teacher. Note in particular how aspects of relatedness, opportunities to increase competence or feelings about competence, and level of autonomy were related to students' engagement in class.

Csikszentmihalyi and colleagues pay particular attention to what they call the "flow" state, when concentration is high, feedback comes directly from engaging in the activity, time flies, and individuals experience great satisfaction and feelings of competence. This tends to happen with the challenges of an activity are balanced with the skill level of the individual. The researchers note that "flow" is extremely rare in school. What strategies might help you increase the opportunities for students to feel or approximate "flow" in your classroom? What techniques exist for optimally challenging all students, given the range of abilities present in any given group of students? What is the connection between feedback and engagement?

Relatedness is also important. What characteristics of engaging teachers did teenagers note? Did you see any connections between these descriptions and what the kids in Fires in the Bathroom say? Or to Geneva Gay's concept of the caring classroom? See if you can draw some threads across these readings.

Farrell & co-authors: Giving voice to high school students: Pressure and boredom, ya know what I'm sayin'?

In this study, Farell enlisted the help of at-risk teenagers in New York City schools to collect recordings of classes and of conversations with their friends and acquaintances who had dropped out or were thinking about dropping out of school. He and the students then analyzed these recordings in an attempt to understand the perspective of students at risk for school failure.

I recommend reading this piece from the beginning. How they dealt with the issue of getting an accurate view of the perspectives of at-risk youth is an interesting story in itself, and has implications for teachers trying to reach out to students. The emphasis at the outset was on listening to students and trying to understand their perspective. How is this different from the kinds of conversations that typically occur between teachers and students?

Pages 492-497 describe social pressures, both in and out of school, as well as how the teens experienced support from friends. The social world seemed to be the major source of pressure for the adolescents who participated in the study.

Beginning on page 497, the authors describe "boredom" in school. This section is fascinating as the first author, Farrell, tries to reconcile his etic or outsider's understanding of boredom with his collaborators' emic or insiders' understanding. Read this section carefully. What does it tell you about the meaning systems of adults in the schools as compared to students?

Looking across the studies

What similarities or themes did you see in these two studies of (apparently) different groups of kids? What would an "interesting" class look like in your discipline? How can you reach out to kids through the way you organize your classroom community? How might you provide opportunities for all kids to feel competent, related, and autonomous in your classroom?