Building Student Persistence

1. Building Student Persistence What can you do?

2. Definition • “Persistence can been seen as being comprised of two parts: intensity (hours of instruction per month) and duration (months of engagement in instruction)” (Comings, 2007) • “Persistence is a continuous learning process that lasts until an adult student meets his or her educational goals…” (Comings, 2007) • There is a difference between persistence and retention.

3. Reflection • What gets in the way of student persistence in your program?

4. Some of the barriers we came up with are… • Transportation Issues • Child care problems • Lack of success in educational settings • Poor attendance • Survival issues • Work schedule • Health issues • Family issues • Mental health issues • Lack of support • Crisis Management

5. What the Research says… • Situational: influences of the adult’s life circumstances. • Outside of ABE control • Institutional: influences of systems. • Can be addressed • Dispositional: influences of life experience. • Can be addressed.

6. What the research says… • “Adult students needed supports to persist. Building supports may be more critical to increasing persistence than removing barriers. Adult students in this study had much more to say about supports to persistence than barriers to it. The most often-mentioned supports fell into four categories: goal orientation, personal relationships, teachers and other students, and self-efficacy.” (Taylor, Smith & Bingman 2005)

7. Support 1: Goal Orientation • “Findings show a significant relationship between persistence and having specific goals as a reason for entering adult basic education (ABE) programs. Theories of motivation also suggest that students weigh the benefit of reaching their goals with the cost of participation. Thus, defining, understanding, and focusing on their goals for participation may help adult students persist.” (Taylor, Smith & Bingman 2005)

8. Strategies Setting goals • Find out about students’ purposes for attending during intake or orientation, and connect these purposes to their specific and broad goals. • Use a variety of assessments for determining students’ skills and needs and provide students with information about their skills and needs. Reassess on a regular basis. • Help students clearly identify their goals and develop an action plan to achieve those goals. Taken from Program Administrators’ Sourcebook (Taylor, Smith & Bingman, 2005)

9. Strategies Seeing progress Toward Goals • Revisit goals individually or as a classroom activity. • Ask students to identify benchmarks for success. • Find ways, inside and outside the classroom, to celebrate progress. • Provide ways for students to see success early in program participation. Taken from Program Administrators’ Sourcebook (Taylor, Smith & Bingman , 2005)

10. Reflection… • Take a moment to reflect on the following: • What are some of the goals your students come in with? • What is your programs process for defining, understanding and focusing on those goals? • Brainstorm for a minute, is there anything else your program could do to improve your goal setting or provide more focus on student progress towards goals? • Do you have any discussion with students to assist them in weighing the cost and benefit of pursuing their goals? If so, what, if not what could you do?

11. What we found… • We talk about goals during orientation. • We talk about goals in counselor sessions. • We talk about goals initially in the classroom. • We can lose focus on goals as students are in the classroom for awhile. • Students would leave and we wouldn’t know if they had gone on to pursue their goal or not. • It was/is hard to stay current on goals.

12. Changes we made • Seven steps to highly effective students • Intro to ABE – Study skills and goals setting class • Road map to success • GED registration and testing dates on the board • GED Pre-registration meetings • Pay attention to college start dates • We pay attention to student goals more in the classrooms. • Design a new orientation that includes ways to monitor your progress towards your goals.

13. Support 2: Personal Relationships • “The most frequently mentioned support among students was having the support of their families, friends, colleagues, God/church, support groups, community workers, mentors, and bosses. Helping students identify the people in their lives who can support their persistence and suggesting they ask for that support may help persistence.” (Taylor, Smith & Bingman 2005)

14. Reflection • What do you do to encourage students to identify individuals in their lives who will support their involvement with ABE? • Brainstorm other things you might do.

15. What we found • This is not an area we have addressed as of yet. • We are considering adding an activity to our Intro to ABE class that helps individuals identify people in their lives who will support their participation in ABE. • We do mention involving family and friends if they will be supportive as a part of orientation.

16. Support 3: Teachers & Other Students • “While this support is also a personal relationship, it is located inside of the classroom and may be something that programs can affect. Adult students said their teachers and their classmates were important supports to their persistence. Teachers should be helped to support their students’ persistence and students should be helped to support each other’s persistence.” (Taylor, Smith & Bingman, 2005)

17. Strategies • Express the program’s philosophy of persistence in the student orientation, intake, or first week of classes. Create an informal, noncompetitive learning environment in which students feel comfortable working at their own pace. Support teachers’ efforts to care about and respect students. • Improve “first encounter” experiences with programs. • Establish a student orientation for all new students. (Taylor, Smith & Bingman, 2005)

18. Reflection • How would you define your program’s philosophy of persistence? Are there any changes you would make? How do you communicate your philosophy to students? • How do you create an informal, noncompetitive learning environment where students feel comfortable working at their own pace ? What else could you do? • How does your program demonstrate efforts to care about and respect students? What else might you do? • What is the first encounter like? What would you do to change it? • Are students required to attend orientation? Are there any changes you would like to make to orientation to help clarify your program’s philosophy and improve their first encounter?

19. Some of the things we do • Have a student area and introduce and encourage students to socialize in that area. • Staff that answer the phone, handle walk ins and do orientation are friendly, helpful and personable. • Build relationships with students in the classroom. We work to remember names, say Hi using their names, work to remember things they have told us and celebrate their successes. • Student follow up post cards, phone calls, letters. • Created a poster that demonstrates our program’s philosophy of persistence. • New orientation presentation was developed.

20. Support 4: Self-efficacy • “Students said that their own determination and self-efficacy (believing they can achieve their goals) was important to persistence. Helping students build their self-efficacy could lead to greater persistence.” (Taylor, Smith & Bingman , 2005)

21. Strategies • Arrange for students to have contact with role models who have succeeded in ABE, ESOL, or GED class. Bring these former students in as guest speakers at intake and orientation activities. Recruit past students to be counselors, teachers, administrators, or fill other leadership roles in the program.

22. Reflection • What do you do in your program to support students belief and determination that they can succeed? • Have you tried using former students or current more experienced students as role models? If so how did it work? If not, consider ways that you might do this. • Brainstorm what else could your program help to support students belief and determination that they can succeed?

23. Some of the things we do • Student of the quarter helps us identify current students who are role modeling self-efficacy. • Distinguished students. • Video during orientation. • Notify referring agencies of these achievements. • Recognize these achievements at graduation.

24. Remember… not all students are ready to commit. • Precontemplation– not ready for change. • Contemplation – Thinking but not doing • Preparation – Preparing but not quite ready. • Action – Taking action and doing • Maintenance – Maintaining change for 6 months or more. (Prochaska and Diclementi,1984) • Tryout students – Motivated to learn, decision to join is positive but not ready to commit to program participation. • Intermittent students – move in and out. May stay in contact. Goals require long engagement they are limited in their ability to attend. • Mandatory – Must attend. • Short-term – Participate intensely for a short period to accomplish a specific goal. • Long-Term – Participate regularly over a long time. Talk about education as an end unto itself. (Taylor, Smith & Bingman , 2005) Stages of Readiness for Change Pathways to Persistence

25. In Conclusion • Student persistence is vital to their success and ours. We hope you have found this to be useful and will take time in your programs to determine what might work for you. Thank you.

26. Resources Comings, J. (2007). Persistence: Helping Adult Education Students Reach Their Goals. In J. Comings, B. Garner, & C. Smith (Eds.), Review of Adult Learning and Literacy: Connecting Research, Policy, and Practice (Vol. 7). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Taylor, J. Smith, C. & Bingman, B. (2005). Program Administrators’ Sourcebook: A Resource on NCSALL’s Research for Adult Education Program Administrators. Harvard Graduation School of Education, Cambridge, MA.