At McGraw Hill, we believe every student deserves to feel truly welcome at school. It’s not a particularly novel sentiment. What might surprise people, however, is that fostering a sense of belonging in our own small, complementary way, is foundational to our instructional design approach.
When students feel a sense of belonging at school, they are much more likely to engage and take appropriate ownership of their own learning. They will, to a greater degree, not only comply, generally, with the expectations of educators, but also recognize for themselves that whether they learn or not is dependent on their willingness to engage in the classroom, with the teacher, with their peers, and with the material.
McGraw Hill is a company largely comprised of former educators and lifelong learners. Our folks are passionate about the pursuit of knowledge, the experience of learning, and the supportive community that school should represent for every child. Beyond our intrinsic affinity for learning, the science of learning validates and reinforces this approach. A sense of belonging is more than a sentimental nice-to-have. It’s an absolute prerequisite to self-efficacious learning, which is fundamental to daily motivation, active engagement, and personal achievement.
Belonging is vital for learning.
We largely know that belonging is important because it simply feels right. Though that’s hardly a universal proof. However, this is recognized by a basic principle in psychology. Most readers are familiar with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. “Belonging” sits in the middle of that well-known hierarchy, just after foundational physiological needs such as food, water, shelter, and safety. In Maslow’s view, not until a person’s sense of belonging is met, can esteem and self-actualization (where the deepest learning occurs) be achieved.
Most educators also know this intuitively. Their instincts guide them to build relationships with students, create welcoming classrooms, and design learning experiences that engage and delight. They know that to see, hear, and understand their learners — to convey to them every day, you belong here — helps illuminate a pathway out of apathy, disengagement, and surrender.
Self-efficacy is essential to motivation and engagement.
Self-efficacy is simply an individual’s belief in their ability to successfully accomplish their desired result on specific tasks or goals. In education, this includes not only achieving the results on a learning task (think: a worksheet, a test), but also a specific belief in their ability to use their skills and knowledge to realize the desired result, even outside the classroom walls.
Because students belong at school — because they are entitled to be there and possess the traits and abilities to engage in learning — they gain the confidence of a deliberate learner and are more likely to do the things that learners do, such as apply acquired knowledge and skills to complete tasks. This goes well beyond an academic exercise.
In my view, this is an ageless human trait, literally. Even as adults, no matter our innate abilities and desires, we will fall short of what we want for ourselves if we feel like a stranger within our own organizations, whether it be a school or a company. To build high-quality programs that resonate authenticity among students and teachers, our academic designers, learnings scientists, and illustrators must also feel a sense of belonging at McGraw Hill. This can be a challenge when the broader social and political context sometimes works against the sense of community most of us need and want. What we trust educators to practice in the classroom, we must also practice among the adults in the world of work.
Self-efficacy can be fostered in learners.
Researchers have identified reliable strategies for educators to employ that foster self-efficacy for learning. Not only does success breed confidence, so does the process of learning from failure. Researchers recommend teachers provide opportunities for mastery experiences, or opportunities to take on tasks that are achievable yet challenging. These allow students to experience success through effort, thus reinforcing their belief in their abilities and encouraging them to tackle more complex tasks over time. This seems to be a bigger challenge every day for all of us as impatience, instant gratification and short-term thinking undermine the daily pursuit of long-term goals, which includes for many of us adapting to the changing employment landscape.
Dr. Matt Strader, Director of Academic Design for Secondary Literacy at McGraw Hill whose doctoral work centers on self-efficacy, argues that fostering a strong belief in self-efficacy will help address the motivation concerns many educators have about their students in post-covid classrooms. In this article, he writes:
“In my conversations with teachers and administrators over the past few years, we talk a great deal about levels of effort. I hear a lot of concerns about apathy among students. We talk about whether students are achieving, but we’re not talking about how self-efficacy can be at the center of this. We’re trying to manage all the symptoms when we could be going to the root of the problem.”
Belonging and self-efficacy can (and should) be reinforced in curricula.
Dr. Strader is part of the team at McGraw Hill that created our recently launched middle and high school literacy programs, Summit! and Soar!
Belonging and self-efficacy are both embedded into the fabric of these programs. They are carefully designed to reinforce every student’s belief that school is for them. The texts students read will reflect their identities, worlds, and communities. Their voices will be valuable to every writing exercise, and their skills will be an asset to the class discussions and projects. Students using Summit! and Soar! will apply their skills and knowledge to succeed as readers and writers, engaging in challenging but doable activities that meet them within their Zone of Proximal Development, stretching them to struggle just enough for the effort to pay off.
Self-efficacious students will thrive in the “real” world — and perhaps change it for the better.
One of the most important outcomes of self-efficacy is a willingness to take academic risks. When students are confident in their ability to apply skills to a task and not paralyzed by the prospect of failure, they’re more likely to push themselves, to stretch beyond their comfort zones, and experiment. Academic risk-taking is a crucial practice for innovation within the classroom and beyond. As our students step out of the classroom and into the world — into a technological landscape changing faster than ever — they need to be adaptable, curious, and intellectually brave. For their sake, and perhaps for the sake of collective societal progress, we should be fostering a generation of self-efficacious learners. When these individual traits are encouraged and developed across a broader community, whether students or team members, the opportunity for a self-reinforcing virtuous cycle can lead to surprisingly positive increasing returns over time.
Dr. John Williams III, an Associate Professor of Urban Education at Texas A&M University and contributing author of Summit! and Soar!, writes of belonging in schools:
“Ensuring students feel a sense of belonging is more important than ever. We live in a time when we are finding a way, as humans, to strip away belongingness, brick by brick and piece by piece, for multiple individuals and groups. Our students see what the adults are doing in their larger communities — and it will, if it has not already, affect their perceptions of their role within their own school communities.”
Students deserve to feel that they belong in school. They deserve to believe in their abilities, to experience success, to have a trusted safety net so that failures become powerful lessons that foster growth. They also deserve a chance to go out into the world and shape, for the better, a society that values them and their peers exactly as they are. And let’s not forget, we adults need this too. Let’s model it!
For more on Summit! and Soar!, visit: https://mhk12.us/mhliteracy
Sean Ryan is president of McGraw Hill’s School group, which is responsible for providing PreK-12 educators and learners with programs, tools, and services supported by differentiated pedagogical instruction and purposeful technology. He was named to his position in April 2020 after serving as CEO of Wall Family Enterprise and before that as SVP and General Manager of Fuel Education, where he was responsible for strategy, marketing, sales, implementation, support and product development for the business.
Prior to these roles, Sean was SVP of Sales, Service & Platform at McGraw Hill, leading the School group’s sales, implementation and training organization. His long career in education includes high profile roles at Campus Management, Scantron Corporation and The Princeton Review of Japan. Sean is also a former military intelligence officer, having served in a variety of capacities in the U.S. and abroad and rising to the rank of captain.
Sean graduated with a Master of Science degree in Management from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, a Master of Arts in International Relations from the University of Arizona and a bachelor’s degree in Soviet Studies from the United States Air Force Academy.
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