Supporting is an educational influence method that focuses on mentoring and helping students develop their learning identity and participate in a learning community; it also helps students adapt to and modulate their personality traits, emotions and moods, and socio-economic influences. Supporting includes the following:
Learning Identity
Self-efficacy - Help students understand that their efforts can lead to success
Fixed vs. growth mind set - Help students understand that through effort they can constantly improve; explicitly train students how to adopt a growth vs. fixed mindset
Grit - Help students understand that they can persevere through difficult challenges
Help students reinterpret negative past experiences as opportunities for growth
Provide social credibility and recognition for academic achievements that might otherwise be invisible or denigrated by peers
Encourage students to think of themselves differently as learners by publicly taking on the role or identity of scholars and learners in the context of their peers
Allow students to try on new identities and roles
Emotion and Moods
Provide for positive emotional experiences (e.g., curiosity, joy, optimism, pride)
Help students persist through negative emotional experiences (e.g., frustration, failure, anxiety, fear, helplessness, overwhelmed)
Socio-economic Influences
Recognize and make efforts to accommodate cultural and societal influences that may influence a student's performance
Loyalty and Citizenship
Create a learning community in your class
Personality Type
Encourage students to manage their Big 5 personality traits
Risk aversion
Impulsiveness
Openness
