Classroom Practices that Support the Development of Purpose

The objective of the study described here was to investigate high school teachers’ classroom practices that may support the development of purpose in life during adolescence. We utilized qualitative methods to understand the practices teachers use to support development across the dimensions of purpose and the practices students recognize as helping them to develop across the dimensions of purpose. The study was approved by the institutional review board at Texas Christian University. We designed the study to answer the following research questions:

1. What do high school teachers do in their classrooms that they intend to support adolescent development across the dimensions of purpose?

2. What classroom-level efforts, if any, do high school students recognize as supportive of their growth across the dimensions of purpose?

The methodology of the study rested on the dimensional understanding of purpose discussed earlier, where purpose is comprised of a long-term intention, personal meaning, engagement, and beyond-the-self contribution. Rather than only asking teachers and students to described practices related to the broader construct of purpose, in the present study teachers were interviewed about practices around each dimension, and students were asked to type in responses on a survey to questions about each dimension.

The teacher sample was purposive; the first author invited teachers interested in the topic of purpose to participate in an interview so that there would be a greater likelihood of uncovering classroom practices that may support purpose development in adolescents. Teachers were incentivized with a $10 gift certificate to a coffee shop. Nine teachers responded to the email invitation, three each from three different high schools. The high schools included a comprehensive public school (CPS), a public magnet school (MS), and a private school (PS). Teacher participants were diverse in gender and years of teaching. The distribution of academic discipline by school was as follows: comprehensive public school (chemistry, math, English), public magnet school (biology, economics, math), and private school (English, writing, math). The comprehensive public school and private school teachers had all been teaching more than 5 years, and all three of the public magnet school teachers had been teaching fewer than 5 years.

The student sample was a convenience sample drawn from students taking part in a related study conducted by the first author. All student participants were taking part in a university-based, federal program to help them stay on track to graduate from high school and go to college. Student participants were eligible to take part in this program because they met federal low-income guidelines and would be the first members of their families to go to college. Students all attended schools in the same district as the public, comprehensive high schools taught at by three of the teacher participants. Twenty-six high school students participated (1 freshman, 11 sophomores, 13 juniors, and 1 senior). Student participants were overwhelmingly female (n = 22). Student participants reported that they were Black/ African American (n = 9), or Hispanic/Latino (n = 16), or both (n = 1). Most students reported that they earned mostly As, Bs, or both in school (n = 24).

Teachers were interviewed using a semistructured interview protocol designed to elicit their thoughts about what they did in their classrooms to support development across the dimensions of purpose (see Appendix). The protocol included questions targeting each of the dimensions of purpose, followed by questions about the broader construct. The first author conducted all of the teacher interviews. Interviews were audio recorded and took about 1 hour. A professional transcriptionist transcribed each interview for analyses.

Student participants responded to eight questions on a Qualtrics-hosted survey. The questions were designed to elicit student thoughts about what their teachers were doing to support their development across the dimensions of purpose. For each dimension, students were first asked whether any of their teachers during the current school year had supported them in that dimension, and then, if they answered yes, students were prompted to describe what their teachers did to support them in that dimension. An example of the prompt for the “goal” or “intention” dimension of purpose is: “What have your classroom teachers done during the 2015–2016 school year to help you discover or learn about your most important goal or goals for your life?” As another example, the prompt for the beyond-the-self dimension of purpose was: “What have your classroom teachers done during the 2015–2016 school year to help you discover or learn about how to positively influence or change your family, community, or broader world?”

The amount of material to be coded was such that each author could make herself familiar with all data, and each of the authors brought a background in teaching to the analytical process. Therefore, coding took place through an iterative process of open-coding, repeated rounds of consensus building, refined coding, and category creation (Saldaña, 2013).

In order to analyze the student data, two graduate assistants (the second and third authors) open-coded the survey responses. The graduate assistants coded the responses individually for any significant ideas that emerged. In consultation with the first author, they discussed their individual codes, came to consensus, and created a table of 17 finalized codes, and definitions and examples of the codes (Table 1).

Next, the second and third authors conducted first cycle coding of the transcripts from the teacher interviews. First, they coded individually, and specifically looked for classroom practices. Second, they compared their codes through a series of discussions with each other to agree upon 13 overarching codes. At this point, the second and third authors met with the first author to review their work and discuss miscellaneous codes. During this consensus meeting, the team subdivided some of the categories to more specifically capture different practices. After this meeting, the second and third authors reexamined their codes and developed a final list with definitions and examples of 32 codes (Table 2). Then, the second and third authors individually recoded the nine transcripts based on the finalized table, and met with each other to discuss and come to consensus on any areas of disagreement. They consulted the first author for expertise when necessary. They utilized an excel spreadsheet to record overall code frequencies in the teacher interviews, as well as individual transcript passages and their respective codes.

The first author examined the tables created by the second and third author. Drawing from her backgrounds as both a researcher familiar with purpose research and a former high school teacher, she further grouped the codes into general categories of practice (Tables 1 and 2). This analytical process was also iterative, cycling back and forth between themes that emerged in the data, discussion with the second and third authors, and existing theory about purpose development and classroom teaching.

In order to further understand how practices distributed across the dimensions of purpose, the second and third authors engaged in an additional round of analysis. They utilized the semistructured interview questions (Appendix A) to refamiliarize themselves with the pertinent questions for each dimension of purpose. Then, the second and third authors created tables for each interview to determine which codes corresponded to each dimension of purpose. Lastly, they created a frequency table to identify the most common codes within each dimension in the teacher interviews.

Practices that emerged in the teacher interviews are reported first, followed by practices recognized by students in their survey responses, concluding with the distribution of practices most frequently mentioned for each dimension of purpose. Recall, the aim of this study was to understand the range of classroom practices that teachers may already be using to support students across the dimensions of purpose: long-term intention, personal meaning, engagement, and beyond-the-self contribution. With this in mind, multiple participants reported some of the practices reported here, while other practices were reported by smaller numbers of participants. Frequency counts were less important for answering the research questions of this particular study, although they are included in tables depicting teacher data (Tables 2 and 3). Regardless of frequency, each reported practice provides a starting point for future work that investigates the ways in which purpose may be supported in the high school classroom, and a classroom-generated idea that practitioners may want to further research and consider in their own classrooms.

Twelve categories of practice emerged from teacher interviews (Table 2). Teachers were able to describe practices across all dimensions of purpose. These included individualized instruction and feedback; positive classroom climate; opportunities for collaboration; opportunities for higher level thinking; talking about future plans related to college; making connections to real life; teacher planning and decision making; authentically bringing the teacher self into the classroom; goal setting; authentically bringing the student self into the classroom; civics; and passion and purpose. Examples of each category of practice, frequency counts, as well as the codes included in each category, are displayed in Table 2.

Nine categories of teacher practice emerged in student survey responses, with most students reporting that their teachers did help develop them across the dimensions of purpose (ranging from 16 to 18 respondents for each dimension). From those respondents who thought their teachers helped to support them across the dimensions of purpose, the following categories of practice emerged: making connections to real life; perspective-taking, future orientation; community/other orientation; self-awareness; teacher support; interpersonal skills; talking about future plans related to college; and trying new things. Examples of each category of practice, as well as the codes included in each category, are displayed in Table 1.

The most common practices related to identification of a goal or long-term intention in the classroom included encouragement, teacher-set goals, student-set goals, and goals set by both (Table 3). Participating teachers promoted goal setting in their classrooms by actively reminding students of their goals and tangible ways to achieve them. Additionally, teachers discussed three types of explicit goal identification in their classrooms. In one scenario, the teacher and student work together to set goals. In another, the teacher sets the goals for their class, without any student input. In one interview, a teacher discussed her role in setting goals and learning objectives, and noted, “I would say that I set the goals very clearly in my classroom, that I control that. I’m the one. I choose the learning objectives. I’m the one who sets the essential questions” (MS, Econ). While some teachers expressed the importance of taking initiative when setting goals in their classrooms, other teachers described the value of assisting students in developing their personal and academic goals. This type of goal identification was categorized under student-set goals, as teachers encouraged students to take ownership of establishing and achieving their goals.

In order to help students find personal meaning, teachers most frequently utilized the following strategies: making outward connections, attending to students’ interests, establishing a strong teacher-student relationship, and making content interesting (Table 3). When teachers made outward connections, they effectively related academic content to the world outside of the classroom for the purpose of real-life application. For example, one teacher noted, “So I think finding something about that class that you can appreciate and that you can connect to I think will make the class in general go a lot smoother” (MS, Math). Not only was it important for the content to relate to the real world, but teachers also created personal meaning when they incorporated students’ interests into the classroom content. Teachers discussed the value of connecting with students and their interests in order to foster a deeper level of understanding. Additionally, when teachers created a positive and trusting relationship with their students, they were able to support students in establishing personal meaning. When teachers had the opportunity to build strong relationships with their students, they were able to further their excitement about the subject. Lastly, teachers cultivated personal meaning in their classrooms when they strove to make content exciting and interesting. This practice was exemplified by a teacher who noted, “And I guess I try to make it more exciting and attainable because I want them to make that connection” (CPS, Science).

Teachers most commonly supported engagement through assessment and feedback, questions and discovery, engagement, and classroom variation (Table 3). Teachers who mentioned giving assessment and feedback to increase engagement evaluated students’ progress through assessment and provided ongoing feedback. Teachers also reported posing questions to further prompt student thinking and to teach students how to develop good questions in order to promote discovery. Additionally, teachers supported engagement by noticing when students were engaged and by continuously providing opportunities for students to maintain focus. Finally, teachers used classroom variation to maintain engagement. For example, the private school writing teacher pointed to variation when he said, “So I think in classroom engagement, the biggest techniques for me are about time and space—moving things around, switching things up, making the point of focus change.”

The most common practices generated by teachers in reference to the beyond-the-self dimension of purpose included using projects and group work, teaching life skills, making outward connections, and civics education (Table 3). Projects and group work includes any type of project-based learning and/or creating opportunities for group work in the classroom setting. By teaching and providing opportunities to practice life skills via classroom activities, teachers believed they were helping students move into more integrated roles in their present and future communities. By applying content to real-life applications, teachers sought to help their students make outward connections. While one teacher discussed how he includes making outward connections for his students, he said, “We were like what does this look like in the real world? What is the relationship between these rules and then these real-life examples that we’re reading about? And for different concepts, I’ll have them look at real-life examples to figure it out” (MS, Econ). The last practice that teachers mentioned in this dimension was civics education.

The findings reported here contribute to knowledge about what researchers may want to consider as they conduct future investigations about how to support the development of adolescent purpose within high school classrooms, and to areas to which high school teachers may want to direct and cultivate their practices if they desire to support purpose development in their students. The classroom practices that have emerged from this work may best be described as general categories of practice, rather than specific content lessons or strategies for implementing these categories of practice. Here, significant themes across these categories of practice are discussed in terms of their researcher and practitioner implications.

Teachers and students noted that teachers’ efforts to make connections to the real lives of students supported development across various dimensions of purpose. For teachers, these efforts focused on skills like work habits, and teaching students what to do to reach a goal, as well as connecting content to the everyday lives of students. Students, in turn, recognized that their teachers helped them develop in one or more of the dimensions of purpose when they helped them to understand that there will be challenges in life, and that these challenges can be overcome. At the core of any of these responses is the effort to make learning relevant to students, a tactic that Hulleman and Karackiewicz (2009) linked to greater student interest and higher student grades, and that directly ties into the personal meaning dimension of purpose.

Perhaps the least surprising way in which teacher and student participants thought teacher practices supported purpose development was through efforts to get students to think about their futures. However, teachers actually discussed this in slightly more limited ways than students. Teachers primarily focused on providing information about college, while students additionally noted how their teachers helped them to think more broadly about their futures, beyond their college pathways. Students, in particular, noted the concrete practice of teachers who asked them to write future plans, or steps they needed to take toward future goals, and some students used words like “purpose” and “mission” to describe the ways in which their teachers encouraged them to think about their futures. Given that purpose includes a long-term intention to accomplish something, it makes sense that practices that explicitly ask students to consider their future plans and goals may support purpose development.

Teacher and student participants noted the ways in which supportive, encouraging teacher-student relationships could support adolescent development across the dimensions of purpose. These relationships may be particularly important for helping students to trust their teachers as sources of information and for keeping students engaged in the classroom work that may help them discover and build competencies that will help them engage their purposes. Recent theory suggests that positive teacher-student relationships are fundamental to student engagement (Corso, Bundick, Quaglia, & Haywood, 2013), along with teachers’ and students’ relationships to the content. The teacher and student participants in the present study add to the body of evidence to support this theory.

Both teacher and student participants also identified a set of related ways in which teachers may be able to support the development of purpose in students: cultivating a willingness to try new things, perseverance, and the ability to learn from mistakes. Teachers primarily focused on the ways in which they handled mistakes in the classroom, and the cultivation of perseverance, while students also noted teachers who had helped them try new things or develop interests in new areas. Individuals likely undergo a period of exploration prior to commitment on the path to purpose (Malin et al., 2014), and students may be more willing to explore a variety of options if they have adopted a combination of grit (Duckworth & Gross, 2014) and a growth mindset (Yeager & Dweck, 2012), located within the supportive teacher-student relationships described above, especially with respect to mistakes. Grit may help students stick to some of the tougher learning that may be required to gain competencies to engage their purposes. A growth mindset—the belief that one can change one’s competencies through effort—may contribute to grit on the path to purpose.

While the number of teacher and student participants who identified ways in which teachers helped students think about the world beyond themselves was lower than some of the other shared themes described here, given the importance of the beyond-the-self dimension to the definition of purpose utilized in this study, it is worth noting the ways in which study participants thought this aspect of purpose may be supported. Teachers who mentioned other-focused strategies tended to describe their efforts to create opportunities for collaboration and group project work, while a smaller number mentioned connecting their academic discipline to the civic roles students would play in their lives. Students, on the other hand, primarily focused on the ways in which teachers helped them develop an awareness of the perspective of others, with a smaller number noting the ways in which their teachers got them involved in community service activities. All of these categories of practice point the ways in which the adolescents in high school classrooms need (and may actually appreciate!) practices that help them develop social cognitive skills. In fact, a growing body of evidence from behavioral neuroscience suggests that adolescence may be a sensitive period for developing these skills, which means adolescents—especially young adolescents—are particularly ready to receive experiences that help them develop social cognitive skills (Blakemore & Mills, 2014) that may be important to the relational demands of enacting purpose.

While the findings of this study suggest general categories of practice within which teachers may want to focus their efforts if they want to develop purpose in their adolescent students, the limitations of the present study offer room to consider future research and practitioner actions. The primary limitation of this study is that it was not designed to test efficacy, and therefore, while the study has generated information about what practices teachers believe they use, and what practices students recognize as helpful to their development across the dimensions of purpose, the study does not provide support for the effectiveness of any of these practices. Another significant limitation of this study is that the findings tended to point to general categories rather than concrete practices. Many of the “practices” that emerged may be better understood as areas of focus, with the how of practice as of yet uncovered. While these two limitations are significant in terms of the immediate utility of this work, the findings as they stand offer reasons for optimism, and the key limitations both point to concrete future directions for researchers and practitioners.

There is much reason for optimism in these findings, because the categories of practice that emerged represent areas of focus that are not limited to any one academic discipline, and that do not require that teachers add on additional content to what they are already required to teach. Teachers from any discipline can connect their discipline to the realities of students’ lives—through content or work habits developed in the discipline. Teachers of any discipline can cultivate positive relationships with their students and discuss future plans. Teachers of any discipline would likely find value in cultivating a willingness to try to new things, perseverance and a growth mindset. Teachers of any discipline can create opportunities for collaboration and group work that develop students’ perspective-taking skills, and many could also incorporate ways to serve the needs of others in the ways that they connect their academic disciplines to the real world outside of the classroom. What the participants of this study demonstrate is that some teachers already are teaching to support development across the dimensions of purpose—even if they do not explicitly name it as such. Future research in this area should begin from these existing teacher and student experiences in order to create, test, and refine more intentional and authentic classroom practices to support the development of purpose during adolescence.

However, what can teachers interested in supporting the development of purpose do right now? So many professional development programs try to deliver evidence-based, best practices to teachers across a variety of subject matters. However, with the subject matter of purpose, the fact is that the research is not yet extensive enough to truly generate this type of knowledge-for-practice, and it may not be the type of knowledge that would best drive change (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999). However, teachers, students, and researchers may together be able to generate knowledge-of-practice (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999) for teaching that supports purpose development by continuing and building on conversations like the ones had between researchers and teachers in the present study. Possible modalities for generating this type of knowledge would be critical friends groups (Curry, 2008), professional learning communities (Wood, 2007), or lesson study groups (Lewis, Perry, & Murata, 2006) focused on supporting purpose development in the classroom. In each of these models, teachers could engage in a cycle of discussion, implementation, feedback, and refinement of practice that may generate more ecologically valid strategies for supporting purpose in the classroom. Additionally, each of these models leaves room for researcher collaboration, further dissolving the line between practical and formal knowledge (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999).

The youth participants in this study added their own perspectives, which, at times, varied from those of the perspectives of the included teachers. With this in mind, teachers may want to consider simply talking more to their students about some of their deeper concerns in life, and creating systems for gathering student feedback and voice in the classroom. Additionally, youth participatory action research, during which youth work with researchers to determine research questions, engage in inquiry practices, report and act on what they find (Ozer, 2017), may offer a pathway for researchers to better understand what adolescents actually think is most important as they develop purpose in their lives. This inclusion of student voice has the potential to develop strategies with which adolescents will better engage and through which they will make positive changes in their lives and the lives of others. For both researchers and practitioners, then, the findings of this study may be best understood as providing a multiplicity of potential ways in which high school teachers and researchers may be able to work with adolescents to support the development of purpose.

Recall that one student’s admission that he was primarily motivated by fear to academically achieve, combined with what the first author knew about the personally meaningful pursuits of many of her students, contributed to her own motivation for studying purpose development. She, as a high school teacher, believed that there must be something more positive that she could use to help her students achieve their academic and personal goals. In fact, the first author began her high school teaching career, and still approaches her university teaching career, as a way in which she can support her students, if they are open to it, on the path to discovering the ways in which their own deep gladness may intersect with one of the world’s many deep needs (Buechner, 1993). In the first study that arose from the teacher data utilized in the present study, teachers revealed that they do, in fact, conceive of their teaching within their own academic disciplines as connected to the personal meaning and beyond-the-self dimensions of purpose (Quinn, 2016). The findings from this study further undergird the contention that wisdom about practices to support purpose development within the high school classroom may be found within the teachers and students in those classrooms. Those in the research community may access this wisdom by asking the right questions, and those in the teaching community may begin the process of surfacing and further developing this wisdom by creating intentional dialogue among themselves and with their students around the topic of teaching practices for purpose development.