How to Activate ‘Explorer’ Mode in Today’s Kids — And Stave Off the Disengagement Crisis
A new book examines why so many students check out of school
Blog Post
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The Disengaged Teen
Jan. 21, 2025
This month, our former LSX fellow Jenny Anderson has a new book out, co-written with Rebecca Winthrop, head of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution. The Disengaged Teen lays out a compelling case for changing the way parents and teachers work with kids, based on a five-year investigation with close to a hundred interviews with youth and findings from the Brookings-Transcend survey of 65,000 students around the globe about what they experience in school. In the Q-and-A below, we asked Anderson and Winthrop to elaborate on the mission of the book, which also dovetails with the Building Belonging project Anderson co-created with other LSX fellows last year as well as New America’s recent roundtables with youth about social media, media literacy, and privacy.
You wrote the book as a response to what you call the disengagement crisis among today's youth. You ask: "If teens everywhere are losing academic ground, how on earth will we collectively help people live healthier, happier, and more creative and fulfilling lives?" What are some of the key signs of this crisis?
A shocking majority of kids are disengaged from school, simultaneously bored and overwhelmed – a toxic combination that we as a society seem to have made peace with. This is a problem on many levels. The more disengaged kids are the less likely to learn the skills they need to be successful in a fast-changing, technology saturated world, and the more likely they are to report feeling sad, anxious or depressed.
Consider some stats: In third grade, 75 percent of kids say they love school. That figure flips by 10th grade, with only 25 percent saying they love school. We know from the science of learning how kids feel about school affects how well they learn.
One out of two middle and high school students report school experiences that don’t inspire much more than coasting. Many kids attend school but have dropped out of learning, putting in minimal effort and failing to develop the learning-to-learn skills they will need to successfully navigate college, work, and life.
Kids don't feel they are being prepared for what's on the other side of school. According to research we did with Brookings and Transcend, In the United States, fewer than 30 percent of students between third and twelfth grade say that what they learn in school feels connected to their life outside the classroom.
Meanwhile, parents are in the dark about how disengaged their children really are. While only a quarter of 10th graders say they love school, 65 percent of parents of 10th graders think their kids love school. Disengagement can be surprisingly hard to see, especially because many disengaged students get good grades. They are not sufficiently challenged and fail to develop the type of resilient learning skills they will need to be successful after high school.
Your book describes four modes of engagement: passenger, achiever, resister, and explorer. And you posit that the most promise lies in explorer mode. Tell us more—why is that the pinnacle versus the achiever mode that today's society seems fixated on?
Briefly, the four modes are:
- Passenger mode – coasting, doing the bare minimum to get by.
- Achiever mode – striving to be perfect, to get gold stars in everything put in front of them.
- Resister mode – often dubbed “problem children” these kids act out or withdraw, using their voice to let us know something is wrong
- Explorer mode— Where kids are developing the muscles to be proactive over their learning. These kids dig in, ask questions about what they are curious about, set goals, and adapt along the way. They are deeply engaged in learning, We want every kid to experience what it feels like to be in this mode.
You are right that Achiever mode is not the pinnacle of the engagement mountain. Kids in this mode are getting great grades but not developing the self-awareness and resilience they will need to navigate a very uncertain world.
We identified two ways kids can be in Achiever mode. Kids in happy achiever mode are building lots of good skills, from organization, goal setting and achievement, but sometimes miss out on developing their creativity. They are so focused on meeting the needs of the system, which is insatiable, that they don’t figure out what they care about.
But we really worry when kids tip into unhappy achiever mode, when they are striving not for excellence but perfection which is impossible. They often become fragile learners. Our research shows that they have high rates of mental health problems including burnout — even higher than those in Resister mode. These kids often fall apart when they fail at something or have to chart their own course.
This book has a lot to offer parents, but there are clearly insights for teachers and education leaders too. What are some strategies they should employ?
We loved the work of John Marshall Reeve whose work on autonomy-supportive teaching is excellent. He and his colleagues showed that, in 35 randomized control trials in 18 countries, when students are allowed some opportunity to take their own initiative, “they are more engaged in class and better able to master new skills, they have better grades and fewer problems with peers — and they are happier, too. The effect sizes were often between 0.7 and 0.9, a significant degree of impact.”
These teachers did not have to change their curriculum or behavior policies. They needed to shift their tone from instructional to invitational; they had to take the student’s perspective sometimes, and they had to offer some choice. This is not choose-your-own adventure education.
As we wrote in an op-ed in the op-ed in the New York Times:
How teachers talk to their students can be as important as what they say. Mr. Reeve showed teachers how to use a reasoning tone (For example: “I’m assigning this article because I want you to understand how photosynthesis can be useful in trying to invent new climate change technology”) rather than controlling (“You have to read this article by Friday”). Students felt more respected and more interested, and they listened more. Controlling language shuts students down. “They’ll put up a shield and block you out,” Mr. Reeve told us. Reasoning language lowers the shield. Kids open up.
These work for parents and educators alike. Teens want to be respected and to rise to do challenging work. Too often in school it’s too easy or too hard—too many kids are outside their zone of proximal development. We need better relationships and effective discussion to get them to tell us where they are so we can help. We heard so many cases of kids who had fallen behind, didn’t know how to ask for help, and ultimately decided it was easier to give up than put in more effort. Learning requires courage: we have to help kids to be brave.