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Poster #79 - Promoting fourth grade students’ autonomy, competence, and relatedness through service-learning

Thu, March 21, 9:30 to 10:45am, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 1, Exhibit Hall B

Integrative Statement

Children have psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, which support children’s self-regulation and engagement (Deci & Ryan, 1985). These needs sometimes go unmet in schools, dampening socioemotional and academic outcomes (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Service-learning (SL) curricula have been shown to support these needs in adolescence through linking coursework to community problems (competence), engaging youth voice (autonomy), and developing community partnerships (relatedness; Kackar-Cam & Schmidt, 2014). SL may also be efficacious for late elementary students as they possess skills and attitudes necessary to improve their communities as a team (civic efficacy, need for discourse; Mitra & Serriere, 2012). We examined how Connect Science (CS), a new SL curriculum that incorporates science and socioemotional lessons, supports fourth graders’ autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

Data were collected through a larger randomized control trial. Fourth grade teachers from a South Central U.S. school district were randomly assigned to intervention (n=14) or control (n=18) conditions during the 2017-2018 school year. Semi-structured focus groups were conducted with a sub-sample (9 control, 9 intervention). Research assistants led each group with 4-5 student participants. Questions assessed students’ feelings and thoughts about science (Table 1). Transcribed interviews were coded using a deductive approach, guided by the psychological needs of interest. Themes and definitions are summarized in Table 1 and preliminary descriptive statistics are reported in Table 2.

Autonomy. Most intervention students (80%) reported meaningful choices in science, typically related to their SL project. Conversely, most control students (80%) could not recall a time that they were given choice in science. The one instance provided was trivial (“If you do choose, it's more like you have definitions, do you want to write the definitions, or do you want to write them in a paragraph?").

Competence. Emotional responses in science were similar across conditions, however students’ sense of difficulty varied. Intervention students viewed science as adequately difficult (75.42%) and discussed the nuances of challenge. For example, highly engaging tasks seem easier (e.g., “When it's fun it's also easy”). Conversely, control students less frequently reported adequate class difficulty (55.09%), sometimes citing disinterest.

Relatedness. Intervention students’ perceptions of teacher relatedness were extremely positive (93.14%). Various behaviors were cited as evidence (“She helps us a lot.” “He respects your privacy”). Control students expressed some teacher relatedness (68.67%), but with mixed perceptions of teachers’ reactions to misbehavior (“My teacher is really nice but…when people are acting out…then she will get mad.”) and being ignored (“Whenever I try to raise my hands, she never calls on me.”). Peer relatedness was similar across groups.

These results provide insight into the benefits of CS in late childhood. Teacher relatedness, unlike peer relatedness, may have been supported by the sense of autonomy conferred by the SL experience. The atypical provision of autonomy may lead students to feel valued and thus, more closely related to their teachers (Cook, Chaplin & Stroud, 2015). Young children appreciate choice, feel capable and more related to their teachers as they participate in SL, suggesting that SL in elementary years is meaningful for students.

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