Non Teacher Mentors and Their Influence on Student Academic Engagement University City High School Sheenal Deo

Student engagement, defined Engagement refers to student’s active participation in learning activity. (Reeve, 2013) Engagement can be assessed by separating behaviors/responses into three categories: Self regulatory strategies (Planning, Monitoring) On task interactions Achievement (Legrain, Radel, Sarrazin, & Wild, 2010)

Benefits of Engagement in Academics High engagement leads to More success Intrinsic Motivation Completion All of which contribute to more opportunities in the future. (Lee & Reeve, 2013; Reeve, 2013)

What affects Student Engagement? Motivation and Agency (Intrinsically motivated students want to exercise their agency more) Transactional engagement: Student- teacher interactions Institutional Support: Conductive learning environment Active Citizenship: Collaboration between students and institutions on challenging social beliefs and norms. (Leache & Zepke, 2010)

Effectiveness of Student- Teacher Interactions Student- teacher interactions shown to produce more engagement behaviors from students Influence student’s motivation and self efficacy (Legrain, Radel, Sazzarin, Wilde, 2010; Leache & Zepke, 2010)

Student Interactions Teachers Non Teacher Mentors (Peers, Volunteers, etc.)

Adolescent Relationships Adolescents pay more attention to advice from peers, or non authority figures. Trust (Leache & Zepke, 2010; Sagayadevan & Jeyaraj, 2010)

Individual Influences on Engagement Self- Efficacy Motivation (Reeve, 2013; Lee & Reeve, 2013; Dias, Moreira, Vaz & Vaz, 2013)

Purpose of this Study To evaluate the relationship between non teacher mentors and students and its impact on engagement.

Participants 28 high school students ( 18 males and 10 females) 19 student mentees, 9 non teacher mentors ages years old University City High School Diverse in ethnicities and SES

Method Participant Observations Event Sampling Interviews

Results Students displayed two main engagement behaviors within their interactions with non teacher mentors: Monitoring On task Interactions

Deduction Trend 1: The amount of time spent interacting with mentors were positively associated with engagement. With consistent, directed focus, the student was more likely to ask engaged questions because they were consistently prompted.

Trend 2: Student’s self efficacy is influenced by and influences, engagement Comprehensive (Monitoring) Inquiries were accompanied by reassurring praises. More questions---> more praises BUT more praises---> less questions being asked.

Monitoring---> Comprehension A majority of responses from students during interactions were comprehensive questions: “Am I doing this the right way?” “Is this the right answers?” “So because of this, the answer means....”

Monitoring & Self Efficacy Monitoring inquiries coupled with motivation praises. “That’s exactly right! Good Job at seeing that.” “Well, you were almost right, awesome try, let’s try it a different way this time..... Wow, you really improved fast on that problem.” Interviews and observations concurred that when students reported being more comfortable in their abilities, they asked less questions. However, they report only becoming more comfortable after thorough praising, which only occurs through interacting more initially.

Factors which Influence Interactions Social Environment and comfortability Mentor to student ratio

Hypothesis was Supported Students reported engaging and interacting with mentor more than teacher. Mentors reported higher level of engagement with themselves than with teachers, from the students. Observations concurred. As assumed, students reported paying more attention with mentors when they trust them more, like they do peers. The results showed that students who engaged with their mentors more, showed advantages similar to those gained from student- teacher interactions

Implications Due to the increasing student to teacher ratio in classrooms, utilizations of different resources to breech this gap could significantly increase academic achievement and success. Breeching social norms between teacher and students to accommodate a more mutually respectful relationship could lead to more student engagement. This increases transactional engagement. (Leache & Zepke, 2010) More trust/ comfortability----> higher student engagement

Limitations Unequal mentor to student ratios. Not all students from same community surrounding University City. Assessment of engagement limited to three factors--- but there are multiple ways to assess student engagement.

Future Directions Longitudinal study Experimental design: Mentor group vs non mentor group Use 1:1 ratio between mentor and students.

Questions?