Highlander Institute‘s Student Experience Survey (SES) helps educators understand how students are experiencing learning through five domains: Sociocultural Awareness, Community Building, Academic Mindset, Cognitive Development, and Critical Consciousness. Survey results may be disaggregated by gender, race and ethnicity, lunch status, and learning profile to raise awareness of how different student groups can perceive the same classroom differently based on their lived experiences. Responses help teachers develop immediate action steps to improve the learning experience for specific students, centering student feedback in intervention efforts. Early results show connections between shifts in teacher mindset and behaviors, student growth within survey domains, and student academic growth.
Archives: Glossary
Awareness Domain
Increasing our understanding of historic and current inequities in education empowers us to 1) intentionally disrupt biased systems and 2) develop deep knowledge of the assets and rich cultural traditions of our students.
Accountable Talk
Respectful conversation between students that often requires the discussion to be based on evidence, data or perspectives around a topic relevant to the learning in the classroom. Lauren Resnick (1995) introduced the concept of accountable talk as a means of raising the level of academic discourse among students. This ensures rigor and moves the conversation from task-oriented to concept-oriented learning.
Academic Mindset
“Academic Mindsets are four key beliefs which deeply influence our behaviors as learners, and which enable learning success. These mindsets affect our motivation, strategies, and perseverance.
They are:
- I belong in this learning community.
- I can change my abilities through effort (a growth mindset).
- I can succeed.
- This work has value and purpose for me.”