Teachers don’t just teach pupils academic material; they also supply support and guidance. By providing the right support, teachers can help students navigate challenging times, build resilience and provide emotional relief.
The most crucial time for this kind of support is when students are under the most pressure. This is usually around exams, when students are under high academic expectations and have a heavy workload.
Great communication can really help to prevent students from feeling overwhelmed. But do reassuring messages actually help students perform better in exams? And if they do, how can we optimise our motivational messages to maximise student performance?
Read on to find out
- Why students need support around exams
- What the latest research says
- How to make your reassuring messages more effective
Why do students need support around exams?
Exam periods can be an incredibly stressful time for students. Not only do they have to revise a lot of content quickly, but they can also be under a lot of pressure to perform well. The exam period can lead to students feeling demotivated and experiencing high amounts of anxiety during exams.
Research has shown that students who experience high levels of nervousness during exams can also end up suffering from large amounts of stress, depression and anxiety outside of school.
Support from teachers can go a long way in reducing these effects, both inside and out of learning environments. Teachers can minimise stress, build confidence and clarify doubts by providing students with reassuring messages. So, let’s see how the latest research can help us craft effective messages to give to students.
What does the latest research say?
A recent study looked at how often teachers give reassuring messages and how these impact students. Specifically, they wanted to see the impact that these messages had on motivation, exam performance, and engagement in the classroom.
To do this, they asked 419 high school students the following question: “During exams period, what does your teacher usually tell you to do to make you work hard and study?”. This allowed them to see what type of messages teachers were giving students and how often they were doing so.
They then gave out questionnaires to measure how much students engaged in lessons and how motivated they felt. They also obtained students’ grades from school records.
The first thing researchers often give out messages that highlighted how capable they knew students were or how much effort they thought students should put into their exams. However, messages that encouraged effort and capability didn’t seem to have any influence on motivation and engagement.
In fact, it was actually emotionally reassuring messages that seemed to have a positive effect. These managed to boost motivation and engagement in lessons, which then increased exam performance as a result.
Interestingly, giving students no messages at all also seemed to impact students, but not in a good way. Without comforting words from teachers, students’ motivation and participation in class greatly decreased. Consequently, students’ exam performance took a dive.
These findings suggest that the messages you give your students before exams can significantly affect their classroom behaviour and their test performance. Whilst infrequent communication is harmful, teachers should also consider how they are talking to pupils. So let’s narrow down how you can make your pre-exam messages effective.
How can you make your reassuring messages more effective?
When speaking to their classes about exams, teachers seem to prioritise messages that encourage effort and capability; however, messages including themes of hope, encouragement and optimism seem to be much more effective. Including reassuring language when speaking to students about exams may go a long way in motivating students and may even lead to better exam performance as a consequence.
Neglecting communication with students can have serious consequences. A lack of support from teachers can be incredibly demotivating, leading to a lack of class participation and lower academic performance. However, reassuring messages do not always have to be profound; small comments interspersed amongst lessons can still have a positive effect. When talking to your students about upcoming exams, you can try to incorporate some short, reassuring messages so students don’t become overly stressed. These can go a long way in boosting motivation and class engagement.
Final thoughts
The messages teachers give before exams can have a profound impact on students. If done correctly, they can increase motivation and involvement in class activities, which can then subsequently affect their academic performance.
However, they style of messages teachers use are incredibly important. For the best results, messages need an emotional touch; using this method can give students comfort in stressful times, which exams notoriously are.
