Student engagement
Encyclopedia
Student engagement occurs when "students make a psychological investment in learning. They try hard to learn what school offers. They take pride not simply in earning the formal indicators of success (grades), but in understanding the material and incorporating or internalizing it in their lives." It is increasingly seen as an indicator of successful classroom
instruction
, and as a valued outcome of school reform. The phrase was identified in 1996 as "the latest buzzword
in education circles." Students are engaged when they are involved in their work, persist despite challenges and obstacles, and take visible delight in accomplishing their work. Student engagement also refers to a "student's willingness, need, desire and compulsion to participate in, and be successful in, the learning process promoting higher level thinking for enduring understanding." Student engagement is also a usefully ambiguous term that can be used to recognize the complexity of 'engagement' beyond the fragmented domains of cognition, behaviour, emotion or affect, and in doing so encompass the historically situated individual within their contextual variables (such as personal and familial circumstances) that at every moment influence how engaged an individual (or group) is in their learning.
design, classroom management
and school building climate. It is also often used to refer as much to student involvement in extra-curricular activities in the campus life of a school/college/university which are thought to have educational benefits as it is to student focus on their curricular studies.
In a number of studies student engagement has been identified as a desirable trait in schools; however, there is little consensus among students and educators as to how to define it. A number of studies have shown that student engagement overlaps with, but is not the same as, student motivation
.
Definitions usually include a psychological
and behavioral component. Student engagement is used to discuss students' attitudes towards school, while student disengagement identifies withdrawing from school in any significant way.
Relationships between students and adults in schools, and among students themselves, are a critical factor of student engagement. This is especially true among students considered to be at-risk and without other positive adult interaction. There are several strategies for developing these relationships, including acknowledging student voice
, increasing intergenerational equity
and sustaining youth-adult partnerships throughout the learning environment. There have been multiple formats identified for this type of engagement.
The National Survey of Student Engagement
identifies dozens of everyday indicators of student engagement throughout colleges and universities.
Another study identified five indicators for student engagement in college. They included the level of academic challenge, active
and collaborative learning
, student-faculty interaction, enriching education experiences and a supportive learning environment.
Indicators of the absence of student engagement include unexcused absences from classes, cheating on tests, and damaging school property.
have raised concerns that definitions and assessments of student engagement are often exclusive to the values represented by dominant groups within the learning environment where the analysis is conducted.
There are several methods to measure student engagement. They include self-reporting, such as surveys
, questionnaires, checklists and rating scales. Researchers also use direct observations, work sample analyses, and focused case studies
.
National Survey of Student Engagement
http://nsse.iub.edu/
Community College Survey of Student Engagement
http://www.ccsse.org/
High School Survey of Student Engagement (HSSSE)
Hope Survey for Schools http://hopesurvey.org
1. Curricular communities which consist of students co-enrolled in multiple courses in the same field of study.
2. Classroom learning communities that focus on group learning activities in the classroom.
3. Residential learning communities that are formed off-campus that provide out of the classroom learning and discussion opportunities.
4. Student-type learning communities that are created for special groups of students.
Within learning communities, students are able to interact with peers who share similar interests and stimulate conversation about the topic. Such conversations are beneficial because they expose the members of the community to new ideas and methods. Students that are a part of such communities are therefore able to generate and construct their knowledge and understanding through inquisitive conversations with peers, as opposed to being given information by the instructor. This type of engagement in the field leads to a deep understanding of the material and gives the student a personal connection to the topic (Zhao and Kuh 2004).
Organizing classrooms into learning communities allows instructors to constantly gather evidence of student learning to inform and improve their professional practice. They use common assessments and make results from those assessments easily accessible and openly shared among members of the team in order to build on individual and team strengths and to identify and address areas of concern. Results are then used to identify students who are experiencing difficulty and need additional time and support for learning as well as students who are highly proficient and require enrichment and extension. Learning community programs also improve students' interpersonal dialogue, collaboration, and experiential learning within the context of diversity, these programs address a decreasing sense of community and connection and allow students to relate their college-level learning to larger personal and global questions.
Classroom
A classroom is a room in which teaching or learning activities can take place. Classrooms are found in educational institutions of all kinds, including public and private schools, corporations, and religious and humanitarian organizations...
instruction
Education
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
, and as a valued outcome of school reform. The phrase was identified in 1996 as "the latest buzzword
Buzzword
A buzzword is a term of art, salesmanship, politics, or technical jargon that is used in the media and wider society outside of its originally narrow technical context....
in education circles." Students are engaged when they are involved in their work, persist despite challenges and obstacles, and take visible delight in accomplishing their work. Student engagement also refers to a "student's willingness, need, desire and compulsion to participate in, and be successful in, the learning process promoting higher level thinking for enduring understanding." Student engagement is also a usefully ambiguous term that can be used to recognize the complexity of 'engagement' beyond the fragmented domains of cognition, behaviour, emotion or affect, and in doing so encompass the historically situated individual within their contextual variables (such as personal and familial circumstances) that at every moment influence how engaged an individual (or group) is in their learning.
Definitions
Student engagement is frequently used to, "depict students' willingness to participate in routine school activities, such as attending class, submitting required work, and following teachers' directions in class." However, the term is also increasingly used to describe meaningful student involvement throughout the learning environment, including students participating curriculumCurriculum
See also Syllabus.In formal education, a curriculum is the set of courses, and their content, offered at a school or university. As an idea, curriculum stems from the Latin word for race course, referring to the course of deeds and experiences through which children grow to become mature adults...
design, classroom management
Classroom management
Classroom management is a term used by teachers to describe the process of ensuring that classroom lessons run smoothly despite disruptive behavior by students. The term also implies the prevention of disruptive behavior. It is possibly the most difficult aspect of teaching for many teachers;...
and school building climate. It is also often used to refer as much to student involvement in extra-curricular activities in the campus life of a school/college/university which are thought to have educational benefits as it is to student focus on their curricular studies.
In a number of studies student engagement has been identified as a desirable trait in schools; however, there is little consensus among students and educators as to how to define it. A number of studies have shown that student engagement overlaps with, but is not the same as, student motivation
Motivation
Motivation is the driving force by which humans achieve their goals. Motivation is said to be intrinsic or extrinsic. The term is generally used for humans but it can also be used to describe the causes for animal behavior as well. This article refers to human motivation...
.
Definitions usually include a psychological
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
and behavioral component. Student engagement is used to discuss students' attitudes towards school, while student disengagement identifies withdrawing from school in any significant way.
Requirements
Student engagement requires that teachers actively seek to create the conditions that foster this reaction. The first step to whole-school improvement in the area of student engagement is for the entire building faculty to share a definition of student engagement. Other steps include clear articulation of learning criteria with clear, immediate, and constructive feedback; show students the skills they need to be successful are within their grasp by clearly and systematically demonstrating these skills, and; demonstrate engagement in learning as a valuable aspect of their personalities.Relationships between students and adults in schools, and among students themselves, are a critical factor of student engagement. This is especially true among students considered to be at-risk and without other positive adult interaction. There are several strategies for developing these relationships, including acknowledging student voice
Student voice
Student voice describes the distinct perspectives and actions of young people throughout schools focused on education."Student voice is giving students the ability to influence learning to include policies, programs, contexts and principles."...
, increasing intergenerational equity
Intergenerational equity
Intergenerational equity in economic, psychological, and sociological contexts, is the concept or idea of fairness or justice in relationships between children, youth, adults and seniors, particularly in terms of treatment and interactions. It has been studied in environmental and sociological...
and sustaining youth-adult partnerships throughout the learning environment. There have been multiple formats identified for this type of engagement.
The National Survey of Student Engagement
National Survey of Student Engagement
The National Survey of Student Engagement is a survey instrument used to gauge the level of student participation at universities and colleges in Canada and the United States as it relates to learning. The results of the survey help administrators and instructors to assess their students' student...
identifies dozens of everyday indicators of student engagement throughout colleges and universities.
Indicators
The term "student engagement" has been used to depict students' willingness to participate in routine school activities, such as attending classes, submitting required work, and following teachers' directions in class. That includes participating in the activities offered as part of the school program and student participation in school reform activities.[Students] who are engaged show sustained behavioral involvement in learning activities accompanied by a positive emotional tone. They select tasks at the border of their competencies, initiate action when given the opportunity, and exert intense effort and concentration in the implementation of learning tasks; they show generally positive emotions during ongoing action, including enthusiasm, optimism, curiosity, and interest.
Another study identified five indicators for student engagement in college. They included the level of academic challenge, active
Active learning
Active learning is an umbrella term that refers to several models of instruction that focus the responsibility of learning, on learners. Bonwell and Eison popularized this approach to instruction . This "buzz word" of the 1980s became their 1990s report to the Association for the Study of Higher...
and collaborative learning
Collaborative learning
Collaborative learning is a situation in which two or more people learn or attempt to learn something together. Unlike individual learning, people engaged in collaborative learning capitalize on one another’s resources and skills...
, student-faculty interaction, enriching education experiences and a supportive learning environment.
Indicators of the absence of student engagement include unexcused absences from classes, cheating on tests, and damaging school property.
The opposite of engagement is disaffection. Disaffected [students] are passive, do not try hard, and give up easily in the face of challenges... [they can] be bored, depressed,
anxious, or even angry about their presence in the classroom; they can be withdrawn
from learning opportunities or even rebellious towards teachers and classmates.
Measuring student engagement
Assessing student engagement is seen as an essential step towards a school becoming a successful proponent. Critical educatorsCritical pedagogy
Critical pedagogy is a philosophy of education described by Henry Giroux as an "educational movement, guided by passion and principle, to help students develop consciousness of freedom, recognize authoritarian tendencies, and connect knowledge to power and the ability to take constructive...
have raised concerns that definitions and assessments of student engagement are often exclusive to the values represented by dominant groups within the learning environment where the analysis is conducted.
There are several methods to measure student engagement. They include self-reporting, such as surveys
Course evaluation
A course evaluation is a paper or electronic questionnaire, which requires a written or selected response answer to a series of questions in order to evaluate the instruction of a given course...
, questionnaires, checklists and rating scales. Researchers also use direct observations, work sample analyses, and focused case studies
Case study
A case study is an intensive analysis of an individual unit stressing developmental factors in relation to context. The case study is common in social sciences and life sciences. Case studies may be descriptive or explanatory. The latter type is used to explore causation in order to find...
.
National Survey of Student Engagement
http://nsse.iub.edu/
Community College Survey of Student Engagement
http://www.ccsse.org/
High School Survey of Student Engagement (HSSSE)
Hope Survey for Schools http://hopesurvey.org
Increasing student engagement
Several methods have been demonstrated to promote higher levels of student engagement. Instructors can enhance student engagement by encouraging students to become more active participants in their education through setting and achieving goals and by providing collaborative opportunities for educational research, planning, teaching, evaluation, and decision-making. Providing teachers with training on how to promote student autonomy was beneficial in enhancing student engagement by providing students with a more autonomous environment, rather than a controlling environment. Another method of promoting student engagement is through the use of learning communities, a technique that has a group of students taking the same classes together. By being part of a group taking the same classes, students show an increase in academic performance and collaborative skills. Increasing student engagement is especially important at the university level in increasing student persistence. It may also increase students’ mastery of challenging material.Learning communities
One method that has been gaining popularity in University teaching is the creation or encouragement of learning communities (Zhao and Kuh 2004). Learning communities are widely recognized as an effective form of student engagement and consist of groups of students that form with the intention of increasing learning through shared experience. Lenning and Ebbers (1999) defined four different types of learning communities:1. Curricular communities which consist of students co-enrolled in multiple courses in the same field of study.
2. Classroom learning communities that focus on group learning activities in the classroom.
3. Residential learning communities that are formed off-campus that provide out of the classroom learning and discussion opportunities.
4. Student-type learning communities that are created for special groups of students.
Within learning communities, students are able to interact with peers who share similar interests and stimulate conversation about the topic. Such conversations are beneficial because they expose the members of the community to new ideas and methods. Students that are a part of such communities are therefore able to generate and construct their knowledge and understanding through inquisitive conversations with peers, as opposed to being given information by the instructor. This type of engagement in the field leads to a deep understanding of the material and gives the student a personal connection to the topic (Zhao and Kuh 2004).
Organizing classrooms into learning communities allows instructors to constantly gather evidence of student learning to inform and improve their professional practice. They use common assessments and make results from those assessments easily accessible and openly shared among members of the team in order to build on individual and team strengths and to identify and address areas of concern. Results are then used to identify students who are experiencing difficulty and need additional time and support for learning as well as students who are highly proficient and require enrichment and extension. Learning community programs also improve students' interpersonal dialogue, collaboration, and experiential learning within the context of diversity, these programs address a decreasing sense of community and connection and allow students to relate their college-level learning to larger personal and global questions.
School climate
The J. Erik Jonsson Community School (3 year-old-5th grade) in Dallas, TX has a simple formula for success: "Powerful Pedagogy + trusting relationships = student engagement" (Journal of Staff Development, 2008). The majority of research is done is early education (Pre-School-5th), but this sentiment rings equally true in higher education. Accomplishing that end is nearly impossible in introductory, general education classes with class enrollments reaching up to 300 students at some schools but relationship-building is a skill that is under-appreciated in the "college experience".See also
- Education theoryEducation theoryEducational theory can refer to either speculative educational thought in general or to a theory of education as something that guides, explains, or describes educational practice....
- Youth engagementYouth engagementYouth engagement is the sentiment young people feel towards a particular person, activity, place or outcome. It has been a focus of youth development, public policy and social change movements for at least forty years.-About:...
- High School Survey of Student EngagementHigh School Survey of Student EngagementThe High School Survey of Student Engagement is a survey designed to investigate the attitudes, perceptions, and beliefs of high school students about their work. The survey is the central component of a research and professional development project directed by the Center for Evaluation &...
- Learning communityLearning communityA learning community is a group of people who share common emotions, values or beliefs, are actively engaged in learning together from each other, and by habituation. Such communities have become the template for a cohort-based, interdisciplinary approach to higher education...