Mental Truancy - the most common form of truancy in our schools
As children and as adults, we’ve all been in situations (lessons, meetings etc) where our mind has disengaged from the topic and we’ve spent a few seconds or even minutes daydreaming. I suspect you can call on countless examples where this has happened to you just this week. So why would this be any different for the students in our classrooms? After all, they are all human beings just like us, that from time to time (if not actively engaged) will drift off into a daydream. I like to call this ‘Mental Truancy’, the type of truancy that is probably happening in every classroom, in every school, in every lesson, every hour of the day.
Mental Truancy refers to the state of mind when a student disengages from the learning process and becomes mentally absent. The student is there in body, but not in mind. During this state of Mental Truancy, students may appear to be compliant by sitting in the classroom and following simple behavioural instructions, but they are not actively thinking. This is where there is a vast difference between basic classroom compliance and true engagement. The problem is, that we can’t see inside the heads of our students to tell us when this is happening and our eyes can often be deceived into thinking that compliance is the same as engagement.
However, there are some common reasons why students slip into this state that we can try to avoid.
A lack of interest in the topic or subject which leads to boredom. If students don’t connect with the subject topic or they don’t feel it is relevant to them, then they can switch off and disengage.
When the cognitive demands that teachers are placing upon students are so low that they can get away with just ‘being’ in the lesson as long as they don’t cause any disruption to anyone else around them. In this scenario students quickly work out what they have to do to stay off the radar of the teacher, but that is it, nothing more is required.
When students are allowed to ‘get away’ with not engaging in the lesson and teachers are happy to almost ‘teach around them’ because they don’t want to challenge their disengagement. This sometimes creates a situation where the teacher almost has an unwritten rule with the disengaged student that if I don’t challenge you (and I leave you alone), then you agree to not make my life any harder than it needs to be right now whilst I’m teaching this class.
Trying to keep all 25 or 30 students engaged and thinking for an hour without any of them slipping into a state of Mental Truancy is no mean feat. It’s relatively easy to get the majority to follow along with the lesson, answer questions and stay up to speed, but in most classes there’s always one or two that can quite easily (if not managed well) begin to mentally truant. This requires careful management, effective strategies and a radar eye to spot the signs and body language that tells you this is happening.
So, how do I spot it? What are the tell tale signs that I should be looking out for?
Students not tracking you with their eyes whilst you’re speaking (looking elsewhere). For true engagement people should be looking at the person who is speaking to them.
Students fiddling with things in their hands as well as not looking at you when you’re speaking to the class (apart from students who have reasonable adjustments due to SEND profiling). By fiddling with things they are clearly demonstrating a lack of focus.
Students casually chatting to other students. If they’re chatting to others when they should be listening to you, then they’re quite obviously off task and not engaged.
Students slouching in their chairs and not demonstrating a positive body language that relates well to learning. This, combined with the previous 3 points demonstrates a lack of engagement and a poor attitude to their studies.
And how do I try to prevent it from happening in the first place?
One of the most effective ways to prevent mental truancy is through the use of Cold Call questioning. Cold Call is a technique where the teacher calls on students randomly to answer a question. This strategy helps to keep students on their toes and ensures that they are actively participating in the lesson. It also promotes an atmosphere of inclusivity and equal participation, as every student has an equal chance of being called upon.
Another effective way to prevent it is to use a combination of visual timers and a culture of silent focus during your independent tasks. By adding a timer it challenges students to work hard for a short period of time and by combining this with students working in silence (because it’s an independent task) you are trying to create the conditions for everyone to think on their own. Removing opportunities for students to opt out of having to think, or just relying on others around them to think and provide them with the answers that they will happily copy down is key in keeping everyone’s brain engaged.
However, there are no LED lights that turn green on a students’ head when they are engaged and then turn red when they begin to switch off and mentally truant. The skill of the expert teacher is to plan for strategies and activities that are proactive in reducing the chances of this happening in the first place, together with being able to quickly spot when this might be starting to happen and intervening quickly to turn those green lights back on.
