Click for video about Individual Conference 3
Note to the teacher/counselor: Remember, there are four reasons that students find value in a class.
- Intrinsic Value/Interest: They are interested in the topic or enjoy the way it is presented/the work that they do in class.
- Utility/Usefulness: They find the information or skills they are learning useful, or they believe that they will be useful in the future.
- Attainment Value/Personal Identity: Learning the material or doing well in the class is important to their conception of who they are as a person.
- Cost: The cost of doing poorly in the class is too great.
- Talk to the student about how he/she perceives his/ herinterest, utility, identity values, as well as the costs of achieving and the costs of failing the course. Connect his/her responses to your analysis of the student’s goal value exploration worksheet for session 1. (Note: in our experience, some students, especially younger students will have a hard time relating to the “attainment value” and “cost” ideas. If those concepts don’t seem to make sense or generate discussion for your student, you can feel free to confine your discussions to utility and interest. Think of UTILITY and INTEREST as essential components of the intervention and attainment/identity and cost as OPTIONAL components of the intervention).
- Ask the student to explain which of the task values he/she thinks is most important and why.
- Ask the student to brainstorm ways that he/she could increase the value of class. Record all of his/her ideas below.
Ideas for increasing the Interest Value of ______________ Class:
Ideas for increasing the Utility Value of ________________ Class:
Ideas for increasing the Identity Value of ______________ Class:
Ideas for increasing the cost of doing poorly or decreasing the cost of doing well.
Discuss how you and/or the student might realistically incorporate at least one of the better ideas into class.