The Psychology of Engagement and Success

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About this Learning Opportunity

The sociologist Durkheim once said that people never feel anything more deeply than when they experience a sense of purpose, awe, or success together in a group. He called this feeling “collective effervescence." When teachers guide students to overcome challenges together and to make the same discoveries at the same time, students feel a collective sense of excitement that helps their brains work more efficiently and that inspires them to engage more deeply in learning, to take more risks, and to remember more. But if students are segregated into “ability groups,” or spend most of their time working on different material (or the same material with different levels of success), teachers will have trouble generating any kind of “collective effervescence” in their classroom. In this webinar John Mighton will explain how teachers can apply research on mindsets and motivation to create equitable classrooms where all students develop the positive attitudes that they need to enjoy learning and to excel in math.

This learning opportunity is being subsidized through funding from Alberta Education.