Why is encouragement important for students

How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is. The path to student confidence begins by creating a culture of encouragement. Teachers and parents can build a culture of encouragement by embodying the belief that every student has potential and is the ability to accomplish their goals. Additionally, you should strive to focus on students' positive behaviors and actions as opposed to their negative ones.

Keeping students on the right track once they demonstrate progress is vital to helping them achieve their goals. Providing verbal praise is a great way to offer encouragement to students who show progress throughout the learning journey.

Tangible forms of encouragement give students a visual reminder that they have the power to learn and succeed. They are especially effective when used sparingly or in moderation after students achieve learning milestones in the classroom. Here are a few tangible forms of encouragement that can inspire students to continue to work toward their goals:.

Students are accustomed to being recognized for achieving major learning accomplishments and milestones. For instance, students typically receive praise when they learn how to read, complete a grade, or graduate from elementary school or high school. However, a true culture of encouragement involves praising students for small achievements and modest improvements in their efforts.

Schools with a culture of encouragement are known for recognizing students for their accomplishments in newsletters and at ceremonies. Others post inspiring messages on social media and post students' names on plaques and on banners in the hallway.

When students receive this type of formal recognition, they are reminded that they have the power to achieve success. They dole out lavish and effusive praise, bear hugs, and hearty cheers or applause. Other encouragers turn to techniques that are quiet and subtle: a soft smile, a kind word, or a light touch on the hand.

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You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar. Correspondence to Benjamin Alcott. Given that my sample is restricted by missing responses, it is not possible to check the comparability of the restricted and full samples across a broad range of respondent characteristics.

The restricted sample performed significantly better than the full sample in examinations at all three time points, indicating that the restricted sample is not directly representative of the full sample.

Also, as with most longitudinal surveys, the LSYPE is prone not only to sample attrition but also to missing components—in particular, non-participation from parents—and item non-response Piesse and Kalton For all variables, missing values were not fully nested within missing values for any other variable, with the exception of the geographic variables region, neighborhood wealth, and urbanicity , all of which are generated from the same base variable postal code. As Table 7 indicates, non-response is especially high for the family-income and National Statistics Socio-economics Classification NSSEC variables, two characteristics that are highly correlated both with academic progression and to one another Piesse and Kalton Analyses indicated that missingness for either variable was strongly associated with progression to higher education and was therefore not occurring at random.

Since item non-response was particularly high for only two covariates, it might be tempting to create dummy variables to identify non-response for these respective covariates in order to hold the cases with missing data. However, while this approach would help to maintain sample size, any subsequent estimated models are likely to produce biased coefficients Jones , and even original proponents of dummy non-response now reject this approach Cohen et al.

Instead, I use listwise deletion, which yields approximately unbiased coefficient estimates even when data is not missing at random Little The main weakness of listwise deletion is the loss of sample. For each row variable, Table 6 presents the percentage of respondents with missing information for a given variable when model-outcome variables were observed. Table 7 presents the correlation of missingness between variables when enrollment in A-levels was observed. Table 8 presents the correlation of missingness between variables for when enrollment in a university degree course was observed.

This appendix provides information about the bandwidth and sensitivity tests used in each matching model. All matching models were produced using kernel matching with the Epanechnikov kernel, and Table 9 presents information about the bandwidth used for each matching model for a more detailed discussion of kernel and bandwidth choice, see Reynolds and DesJardins The Mantel—Haenszel test determines how strongly the influence of an unobserved dichotomous variable would need to be in order to undermine the given model.

See Table Reprints and Permissions. Alcott, B. A Propensity-Score Matching Analysis. Res High Educ 58, — Download citation. Received : 15 October Published : 13 January Issue Date : November Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:. Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative. Skip to main content. Search SpringerLink Search. Download PDF. This study tries to answer the following questions: 1. Does any impact of such encouragement extend to future enrollment in a university degree course? Some potential sources of bias in this measure of encouragement should be noted.

The Empirical Model I work from the assumption that it is implausible that teachers randomly choose which students to encourage to continue to the final years of schooling. Table 1 Descriptive statistics for sample Full size table. Table 2 Comparison of students who report receiving encouragement, all those who do not, and the matched comparison group of students who do not Full size table. Common support between students who report encouragement and those who do not.

Full size image. Table 4 ATT estimates for impact of encouragement on enrollment in a university degree course Full size table. Discussion Limitations One key limitation of the propensity-score matching approach is its reliance on observed variables. Contributions In spite of these limitations, this study contributes to the research literature on this subject.

Perhaps this should encourage greater optimism about the role that formal education is able to play in tackling inequality To my knowledge, this research is the first to provide inferential analysis on the role of student—teacher interactions in university access. Notes 1. In England, this school grade is known as Year References Adnett, N.

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Google Scholar Times Higher Education. Article Google Scholar Vignoles, A. Google Scholar Download references. Appendices Appendix 1: Missing Data Given that my sample is restricted by missing responses, it is not possible to check the comparability of the restricted and full samples across a broad range of respondent characteristics.

Table 5 Comparison of restricted and full samples Full size table. Table 6 Percentage of observations missing each variable, by outcome Full size table. Table 7 Correlation of missing variables for A-level models Full size table.

Table 8 Correlation of missing variables for university models Full size table. Table 9 Mantel—Haenszel test results for each model Full size table. Table 10 ATT results for models when re-run with alternate kernel specifications Full size table. Recently in an Early Childhood and Development course for high school seniors, the concept of encouragement vs. It feels good to be validated by others. But like too much candy, too much praise can be unhealthy by creating dependence on others and lack of faith in one's self.

Praise can also create a sense of competition among students. A preschool teacher just last week shared an example that illustrates how praise promotes comparisons and competition , rather than working hard because it feels good.

Her students were working on puzzles around the room, and when one student finished he brought the puzzle to her to show his work.

Unlike Praise, Encouragement helps students focus on effort, progress, and specifics of the job at hand. You can also encourage self-evaluation by saying, "I would like to hear what you think first.