Supporting Adolescent Learners: Social and Emotional Wellbeing

Natalie McMaster talks with Donna Pendergast, Director Engagement in the Arts, Education and Law Group, and the former Dean and Head of School of Education and Professional Studies (2009-2023) at Griffith University.

Listen to learn more about a global MOOC for professional development which explores the social and emotional wellbeing of young adolescents.  Use this URL to access the MOOC https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/supporting-adolescent-learners 

Transcript

 U1 

 0:06 

 Okay. Hi, everybody. We're talking today with Donna Pendergast, the Dean and Head of School of Education and Professional Studies from Griffith University. Hi, Donna. Hi, Nat. Donna's written a chapter in the book titled Health and Wellbeing in the Middle Grades Research for Effective Middle Level Nation. And your chapter, Donna, focuses on the development and delivery of a global MOOC exploring the social and emotional well being of young adolescents, which I think is really interesting. Can you begin by just, I suppose, introducing the other chapter author and explaining what a MOOC is for some 

 U2 

 0:44 

 of our listeners? I certainly can, Nat. So the other chapter author is Associate Professor Catherine Maine. And Catherine Maine and I have worked in the area of young adolescent learners, their engagement, what makes them unique, and special teachers and school reform in this area for I can't believe I'm saying this two decades, and we've been colleagues during that time. So she and I had the opportunity to develop this MOOC, and so we grabbed it and we thought, what an exciting new way of doing something that we haven't tried before. 

 U1 

 1:15 

 Fantastic. And so a MOOC itself is a massive open. 2s Online course. So MOOC and very, very popular towards the last ten years or so. But what MOOCs are all about is about providing a lot of people with access to knowledge and information that's not necessarily synchronous. So it can be asynchronous typically, which means that you don't all have to be there at the same time time it's self paced, so that means you can also work at the pace that suits you most. And typically it also doesn't discriminate on previous qualifications. So anybody can join the group and be part of it and at the end it might articulate into another program or it might not. It might just be a thing in its own end. So it's an opportunity to engage and there are no boundaries. Anyone can be part of a MOOC. 

 U1 

 2:13 

 Oh, fantastic. And I noticed, congratulations, that this MOOC, as of today, when I had a look, had 32,784 enrollments. So obviously learning about social and emotional well being is an area of interest for teachers and adolescent learners. Absolutely. 

 U2 

 2:34 

 And look, I think that's why the MOOC has been pretty successful. And we know that as a MOOC, some of them get into the millions of numbers of enrollments, but this is actually a good size MOOC, so it's regarded as being highly successful. 2s The self paced, asynchronous nature of it, I think, really mattered. But this is how we established it, our rationale. So this might be the reason why people were engaged in it. We said it's. A large and growing body of research shows that adolescents who score high on social and emotional wellbeing report improve grades, better relationships, less trouble at school, and a lesser likelihood of emotional problems in this course. Ultimately, you'll learn how to help adolescent learners develop the skills and mindsets that will allow them to thrive. You'll investigate the social, emotional, intellectual and physical development of young people, explore the uses of neuroscience and education, and help youth embrace lifelong learning. So we promise to do that in a two week block with kind of 6 hours of intensive work, but quite a lot of additional optional work as well. And so I think that was why it was successful, because we attracted people to something that's really important to them. 

 U1 

 3:48 

 Fantastic. 2s I've got a question here about whether or not where the participants in the MOOC have sort of come from and if there are opportunities in the MOOC for networking with other teachers. 

 U2 

 4:02 

 Yes, it's a really interesting question, actually. So we had here's an interesting 1s fun fact. 26% were from the UK, so a quarter from there it we had 12% from India. 1s And then 3% from Australia, US, Pakistan and then also folks from the Philippines, Brazil, Nigeria, Indonesia, Colombia, Nepal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, singapore, Chile, Mexico. And on and on it went. So you would say it really was a global, massive online open course. It really did achieve that goal, and we were stunned. So we had 32 countries, people from 32 countries, and the percentage of male to female, we had 61% were female, 38% male, and 2% non binary. So that was really interesting for us. And then some undisclosed. And we also had for a MOOC, you actually also have different levels of participation. So a lot of people will register for a MOOC, but then not actually go through and complete it all. And we had a really high completion rate. In fact, it was one of the we got this really big applause because usually it's about 50%, and ours was at 80.3%, which again, is regarded as being quite phenomenal. So I think we just got the topic right. 

 U1 

 5:32 

 Fantastic. So you've also done a lot of research about the importance of a sense of belonging at school. Does this topic come up in the content of the movement? Yes, 

 U2 

 5:43 

 look, it does. And sense of belonging at school is an area that several my colleagues, including Catherine and I, have conducted research in this area, and we look at it as being one of those central factors. When you look at student engagement, you move across a continuum from behavioral engagement. Students are there, they're turning up, they're participating, but they're not necessarily emotionally engaged. Then the next phase on the continuum of engagement is that social and emotional engagement and sense of belonging fits in there. And then you move across to cognitive engagement, and that's where people have a volition for learning. They're identic, they're really cognitively engaged, and that students can have different levels of engagement in different subject areas with different teachers, but it fits very firmly in the middle, that sense of belonging at school. And we've found that to be one of the critical factors. If students feel like they're a part of it, they want to be there, and that there's a pull as well as a push for them to be part of that community. It makes such a difference to their participation, their engagement levels. If students are engaged, they're more likely to have higher learning outcomes and achieve their optimum. So it's always about providing optimal learning conditions for young people. 

 U1 

 7:02 

 Fantastic. Was there anything else you wanted to talk about before we finish up today? 

 U2 

 7:08 

 Look, what we found was that 98% of our participants said met their expectations. So that was really nice that people got what they thought they wanted to get. And here's a really fascinating piece of insight that under eighteen s four percent of our participants were actually aged under 18. So you might actually regard them as being in that young adolescent age group. And when they we asked them, why did you participate? They said things like I really wanted to understand myself better. And quite a few of our participants also, along with being teachers, we had a lot of health workers. So people working in fields with young people around healthcare as well as parents. So we attracted a very diverse group, which suggests to me that there is a lot of interest in this area and work to be done and the opportunities are there. So I would encourage people who are working this space to think of ways of making their materials accessible to others. 

 U1 

 8:09 

 Fantastic. And so to access the MOOC, where's the best place 

 U2 

 8:14 

 to go? It's absolutely the best idea is to just hop online and Google the name of the program so that's wellbeing, for young adolescents, if you Google that and you look at open access, you'll find the two of those things coming together and it has a whole series of when the next offerings appear. 

 U1 

 8:33 

 Fantastic. Thanks for talking, talking to me today, Donna, and thank you so much for your research in the field of education. Thanks, Nat, thrilled to be part of this. Bye.