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45 survey questions to understand student engagement in online learning.

In our work with K-12 school districts during the COVID-19 pandemic, countless district leaders and school administrators have told us how challenging it's been to  build student engagement outside of the traditional classroom. 

Not only that, but the challenges associated with online learning may have the largest impact on students from marginalized communities.   Research   suggests that some groups of students experience more difficulty with academic performance and engagement when course content is delivered online vs. face-to-face.

As you look to improve the online learning experience for students, take a moment to understand  how students, caregivers, and staff are currently experiencing virtual learning. Where are the areas for improvement? How supported do students feel in their online coursework? Do teachers feel equipped to support students through synchronous and asynchronous facilitation? How confident do families feel in supporting their children at home?

Below, we've compiled a bank of 45 questions to understand student engagement in online learning.  Interested in running a student, family, or staff engagement survey? Click here to learn about Panorama's survey analytics platform for K-12 school districts.

Download Toolkit: 9 Virtual Learning Resources to Engage Students, Families, and Staff

45 Questions to Understand Student Engagement in Online Learning

For students (grades 3-5 and 6-12):.

1. How excited are you about going to your classes?

2. How often do you get so focused on activities in your classes that you lose track of time?

3. In your classes, how eager are you to participate?

4. When you are not in school, how often do you talk about ideas from your classes?

5. Overall, how interested are you in your classes?

6. What are the most engaging activities that happen in this class?

7. Which aspects of class have you found least engaging?

8. If you were teaching class, what is the one thing you would do to make it more engaging for all students?

9. How do you know when you are feeling engaged in class?

10. What projects/assignments/activities do you find most engaging in this class?

11. What does this teacher do to make this class engaging?

12. How much effort are you putting into your classes right now?

13. How difficult or easy is it for you to try hard on your schoolwork right now?

14. How difficult or easy is it for you to stay focused on your schoolwork right now?

15. If you have missed in-person school recently, why did you miss school?

16. If you have missed online classes recently, why did you miss class?

17. How would you like to be learning right now?

18. How happy are you with the amount of time you spend speaking with your teacher?

19. How difficult or easy is it to use the distance learning technology (computer, tablet, video calls, learning applications, etc.)?

20. What do you like about school right now?

21. What do you not like about school right now?

22. When you have online schoolwork, how often do you have the technology (laptop, tablet, computer, etc) you need?

23. How difficult or easy is it for you to connect to the internet to access your schoolwork?

24. What has been the hardest part about completing your schoolwork?

25. How happy are you with how much time you spend in specials or enrichment (art, music, PE, etc.)?

26. Are you getting all the help you need with your schoolwork right now?

27. How sure are you that you can do well in school right now?

28. Are there adults at your school you can go to for help if you need it right now?

29. If you are participating in distance learning, how often do you hear from your teachers individually?

For Families, Parents, and Caregivers:

30 How satisfied are you with the way learning is structured at your child’s school right now?

31. Do you think your child should spend less or more time learning in person at school right now?

32. How difficult or easy is it for your child to use the distance learning tools (video calls, learning applications, etc.)?

33. How confident are you in your ability to support your child's education during distance learning?

34. How confident are you that teachers can motivate students to learn in the current model?

35. What is working well with your child’s education that you would like to see continued?

36. What is challenging with your child’s education that you would like to see improved?

37. Does your child have their own tablet, laptop, or computer available for schoolwork when they need it?

38. What best describes your child's typical internet access?

39. Is there anything else you would like us to know about your family’s needs at this time?

For Teachers and Staff:

40.   In the past week, how many of your students regularly participated in your virtual classes?

41. In the past week, how engaged have students been in your virtual classes?

42. In the past week, how engaged have students been in your in-person classes?

43. Is there anything else you would like to share about student engagement at this time?

44. What is working well with the current learning model that you would like to see continued?

45. What is challenging about the current learning model that you would like to see improved?

Elevate Student, Family, and Staff Voices This Year With Panorama

Schools and districts can use Panorama’s leading survey administration and analytics platform to quickly gather and take action on information from students, families, teachers, and staff. The questions are applicable to all types of K-12 school settings and grade levels, as well as to communities serving students from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds.

In the Panorama platform, educators can view and disaggregate results by topic, question, demographic group, grade level, school, and more to inform priority areas and action plans. Districts may use the data to improve teaching and learning models, build stronger academic and social-emotional support systems, improve stakeholder communication, and inform staff professional development.

To learn more about Panorama's survey platform, get in touch with our team.

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Student Engagement: What Is It? Why Does It Matter?

• First Online: 01 January 2012

Cite this chapter

• Jeremy D. Finn 4 &
• Kayla S. Zimmer 5  

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This chapter considers the relationships of student engagement with ­academic achievement, graduating from high school, and entering postsecondary schooling. Older and newer models of engagement are described and critiqued, and four common components are identified. Research on the relationship of each component with academic outcomes is reviewed. The main themes are that engagement is essential for learning, that engagement is multifaceted with behavioral and psychological components, that engagement and disengagement are developmental and occur over a period of years, and that student engagement can be modified through school policies and practices to improve the prognoses of students at risk. The chapter concludes with a 13-year longitudinal study that shows the relationships of academic achievement, behavioral and affective engagement, and dropping out of high school.

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Student Engagement in Higher Education: Conceptualizations, Measurement, and Research

All better than being disengaged: Student engagement patterns and their relations to academic self-concept and achievement

Student Engagement: Current State of the Construct, Conceptual Refinement, and Future Research Directions

 Adapted from Fredericks et al. ( 2004 , p. 60).

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Finn, J.D., Zimmer, K.S. (2012). Student Engagement: What Is It? Why Does It Matter?. In: Christenson, S., Reschly, A., Wylie, C. (eds) Handbook of Research on Student Engagement. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-2018-7_5

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Staying Engaged: Knowledge and Research Needs in Student Engagement

Ming-te wang.

School of Education, Learning Research and Development Center, Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh

Jessica Degol

School of Education, University of Pittsburgh

In this article, we review knowledge about student engagement and look ahead to the future of study in this area. We begin by describing how researchers in the field define and study student engagement. In particular, we describe the levels, contexts, and dimensions that constitute the measurement of engagement, summarize the contexts that shape engagement and the outcomes that result from it, and articulate person-centered approaches for analyzing engagement. We conclude by addressing limitations to the research and providing recommendations for study. Specifically, we point to the importance of incorporating more work on how learning-related emotions, personality characteristics, prior learning experiences, shared values across contexts, and engagement in nonacademic activities influence individual differences in student engagement. We also stress the need to improve our understanding of the nuances involved in developing engagement over time by incorporating more extensive longitudinal analyses, intervention trials, research on affective neuroscience, and interactions among levels and dimensions of engagement.

Over the past 25 years, student engagement has become prominent in psychology and education because of its potential for addressing problems of student boredom, low achievement, and high dropout rates. When students are engaged with learning, they can focus attention and energy on mastering the task, persist when difficulties arise, build supportive relationships with adults and peers, and connect to their school ( Wang & Eccles, 2012a , 2012b ). Therefore, student engagement is critical for successful learning ( Appleton, Christenson, & Furlong, 2008 ). In this article, we review research on student engagement in school and articulate the key features of student engagement. In addition, we provide recommendations for research on student engagement to address limits to our understanding, apply what we have learned to practice, and focus on aspects that warrant further investigation.

KEY FEATURES OF STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

Engagement is distinct from motivation.

Engagement is a broadly defined construct encompassing a variety of goal-directed behaviors, thoughts, or affective states ( Fredricks, Blumenfeld, & Paris, 2004 ). Although definitions of engagement vary across studies ( Reschly & Christenson, 2012 ), engagement is distinguished from motivation. A common conceptualization, though not universally established, is that engagement is the effort directed toward completing a task, or the action or energy component of motivation ( Appleton et al., 2008 ). For example, motivation has been defined as the psychological processes that underlie the energy, purpose, and durability of activities, while engagement is defined as the outward manifestation of motivation ( Skinner, Kindermann, Connell, & Wellborn, 2009 ). Engagement can take the form of observable behavior (e.g., participation in the learning activity, on-task behavior), or manifest as internal affective (e.g., interest, positive feelings about the task) and cognitive (e.g., metacognition, self-regulated learning) states ( Christenson et al., 2008 ). Therefore, when motivation to pursue a goal or succeed at an academic task is put into action deliberately, the energized result is engagement.

Engagement Is Multilevel

Engagement is a multilevel construct, embedded within several different levels of increasing hierarchy ( Eccles & Wang, 2012 ). Researchers have focused on at least three levels in relation to student engagement ( Skinner & Pitzer, 2012 ). The first level represents student involvement within the school community (e.g., involvement in school activities). The second level narrows the focus to the classroom or subject domain (e.g., how students interact with math teachers and curriculum). The third level examines student engagement in specific learning activities within the classroom, emphasizing the moment-to-moment or situation-to-situation variations in activity and experience.

Engagement Is Multidimensional

Although most researchers agree that student engagement is multidimensional, consensus is lacking over the dimensions that should be distinguished ( Fredricks et al., 2004 ). Most models contain both a behavioral (e.g., active participation within the school) and an emotional (e.g., affective responses to school experiences) component ( Finn, 1989 ). Other researchers have identified cognitive engagement as a third factor that incorporates mental efforts that strengthen learning and performance, such as self-regulated planning and preference for challenge ( Connell & Wellborn, 1991 ; Wang, Willett, & Eccles, 2011 ). Although not as widely recognized, a fourth dimension, agentic engagement , reflects a student’s direct and intentional attempts to enrich the learning process by actively influencing teacher instruction, whereas behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement typically represent student reactions to classroom experiences ( Reeve & Tseng, 2011 ). Given the variety of definitions of engagement throughout the field, researchers must specify their dimensions and ensure that their measures align properly with these descriptions of engagement.

Engagement Is Malleable

Student engagement is shaped by context, so it holds potential as a locus for interventions ( Wang & Holcombe, 2010 ). When students have positive learning experiences, supportive relationships with adults and peers, and reaffirmations of their developmental needs in learning contexts, they are more likely to remain actively engaged in school ( Wang & Eccles, 2013 ). Structural features of schools (e.g., class size, school location) have also been attributed to creating an educational atmosphere that influences student engagement and achievement. However, structural characteristics may not directly alter student engagement, but may in fact alter classroom processes, which in turn affect engagement ( Benner, Graham, & Mistry, 2008 ).

Several aspects of classroom processes are central to student engagement. For example, engagement is greater in classrooms where tasks are hands-on, challenging, and authentic ( Marks, 2000 ). Teachers who provide clear expectations and instructions, strong guidance during lessons, and constructive feedback have students who are more behaviorally and cognitively engaged ( Jang, Reeve, & Deci, 2010 ). Researchers have also linked high parental expectations to persistence and interest in school ( Spera, 2005 ), and linked high parental involvement to academic success and mental health both directly and indirectly through behavioral and emotional engagement ( Wang & Sheikh-Khalil, 2014 ). Conceptualizing student engagement as a malleable construct enables researchers to identify features of the environment that can be altered to increase student engagement and learning.

Engagement Predicts Student Outcomes

Student engagement is a strong predictor of educational outcomes. Students with higher behavioral and cognitive engagement have higher grades and aspire to higher education ( Wang & Eccles, 2012a ). Emotional engagement is also correlated positively with academic performance ( Stewart, 2008 ). Student engagement also operates as a mediator between supportive school contexts and academic achievement and school completion ( Wang & Holcombe, 2010 ). Therefore, increasing student engagement is a critical aspect of many intervention efforts aimed at reducing school dropout rates ( Archambault, Janosz, Morizot, & Pagani, 2009 ; Christenson & Reschly, 2010 ; Wang & Fredricks, 2014 ). Moreover, engagement is linked to other facets of child development. Youth with more positive trajectories of behavioral and emotional engagement are less depressed and less likely to be involved in delinquency and substance abuse ( Li & Lerner, 2011 ). School disengagement has been linked to negative indicators of youth development, including higher rates of substance use, problem behaviors, and delinquency ( Henry, Knight, & Thornberry, 2012 ). Some of these associations may actually be reciprocal, so that high engagement may lead to greater academic success, and greater academic success may then lead to even greater academic engagement ( Hughes, Luo, Kwok, & Loyd, 2008 ).

Engagement Comes in Qualitatively Different Patterns

Using person-centered approaches to study engagement advances our understanding of student variation in multivariate engagement profiles and the differential impact of these profiles on child development. One study ( Wang & Peck, 2013 ) used latent profile analysis to classify students into five groups of varying patterns of behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement, which were associated differentially with educational and psychological functioning. For example, a group of emotionally disengaged youth was identified (high behavioral and cognitive engagement, but low emotional engagement) with grade point averages and dropout rates comparable to those of the highly engaged group of youth (high on all three dimensions). However, despite their academic success, the emotionally disengaged students had a greater risk of poor mental health, reporting higher rates of symptoms of depression than any other group. Furthermore, growth mixture modeling analysis with a combined measure of behavioral, cognitive, and emotional engagement showed that unlike most individuals who experienced high to moderately stable trajectories of engagement throughout adolescence, many students experienced linear or nonlinear growth or declines ( Janosz, Archambault, Morizot, & Pagani, 2008 ). Students with unstable patterns of engagement were more likely to drop out. These developmental patterns and profiles cannot be detected by variable-centered approaches that focus on population means and overlook heterogeneity across groups. As person-centered research becomes more common, targeted intervention programs should be more effective at serving unique subgroups of students with specific developmental needs.

Disengagement Is More Than the Lack of Engagement

One of the inconsistencies found in the research is whether we should distinguish engagement from disengagement and measure these constructs on the same continuum or as separate continua. Most studies consider engagement as the opposite of disengagement with lower levels of engagement indicating more disengagement. However, some researchers have begun to view disengagement as a separate and distinct psychological process that makes unique contributions to academic outcomes, not simply as the absence of engagement ( Jimerson, Campos, & Greif, 2003 ). For example, behavioral and emotional indicators of engagement (e.g., effort, interest, persistence) and disaffection (e.g., withdrawal, boredom, frustration) can be treated as separate constructs, indicating that although similar, engagement and disaffection do not overlap completely ( Skinner, Furrer, Marchand, & Kindermann, 2008 ). Researchers should incorporate separate measures of engagement and disengagement into their work to determine the unique contributions of each construct to academic, behavioral, and psychological outcomes.

LOOKING AHEAD

Although we know much from research on student engagement, a number of areas require clarification and expansion.

Affective Arousal and Engagement

Emotions in educational contexts can enhance or impede learning by shaping the motivational and cognitive strategies that individuals use when faced with a new challenge. Negative emotions such as anxiety may interfere with performing a task by reducing the working memory, energy, and attention directed at completing the task, whereas positive emotions such as enjoyment, hope, and pride may increase performance by focusing attention on the task and promoting adaptive coping strategies ( Pekrun, Goetz, Titz, & Perry, 2002 ; Reschly, Huebner, Appleton, & Antaramian, 2008 ). However, much of the work on emotions and engagement focuses on general dispositions toward the learning environment, such as measuring interest in or valuing of school ( Stewart, 2008 ). Far less is known about how students’ actual emotions or affective states during specific learning activities influence their academic engagement and achievement ( Linnenbrink-Garcia & Pekrun, 2011 ). Researchers rarely measure how emotions relate to subsequent engagement, relying predominantly on retrospective student self-reports to measure affective states. Useful supplements to students’ reports would be psychophysiological indicators of emotional distress (e.g., facial expression, heart rate) and experience sampling methods to assess situational emotional states during classroom activities.

With the advancement of brain imaging technology, neuroimaging studies show that affective states during learning are important in determining how efficiently the brain processes new information ( Schwabe & Wolf, 2012 ). Although neuroimaging cannot be used to measure classroom engagement in real time, neuroscience techniques are valuable tools that may advance our understanding of how emotional experiences shape neural processing of information and affect engagement during a task. For example, do prolonged states of boredom in the classroom actually alter the shape and functionality of the brain over time, and can we intervene in these processes to reverse the negative effects of boredom or apathy? We also need a more thorough understanding of how genetic predispositions and environmental conditions interact to alter brain chemistry. Studies should identify precursors to or triggers for negative affective experiences, and identify environmental supports that can eliminate these negative emotions, foster adaptive coping strategies, and increase learning engagement and performance.

Interactions Among Levels

Engagement is represented at many hierarchical levels in the educational environment (e.g., school, classroom, momentary level). However, researchers rarely frame their conceptualizations and assessments of engagement in terms of a hierarchical system or process, so we lack understanding about how student engagement at these various levels interacts to influence performance. Learning is a continuous developmental process, not an instantaneous event, and engagement is the energy that directs mental, behavioral, and psychological faculties to the learning process. By focusing on only one level of engagement, we understand little about the process through which engagement is formed and leads ultimately to academic achievement.

Are there reciprocal interrelations between more immediate states of engagement and broader representations, such that moment-to-moment engagement within the classroom informs feelings and behaviors toward the school as a whole, which then trickle down to influence momentary classroom engagement through a continuous feedback loop? Are these levels additive or multiplicative, such that higher engagement across the board is associated with better academic outcomes than high engagement at only one or two levels? Or does engagement at one level compensate for lower engagement at another level, demonstrating that high engagement across all levels is not necessary for optimal functioning? Broadening the focus of research to incorporate engagement at many micro and macro levels of the educational context would advance our understanding of how different levels develop and interact to shape student engagement, and the differential pathways that lead to academic success.

Development of Many Dimensions

Despite the consensus over the multidimensionality of student engagement, the role that each dimension plays in shaping academic outcomes remains unclear ( Skinner et al., 2008 ). Three avenues warrant exploration: (a) independent relations, (b) emotional engagement (which drives behavioral and cognitive engagement), and (c) reciprocal relations.

Independent relations suggest that each dimension of engagement makes unique contributions to student functioning. In other words, high behavioral engagement cannot compensate for the effects of low emotional engagement, given that both shape student outcomes independently.

The second avenue posits that emotional engagement could be a prerequisite for behavioral and cognitive engagement. According to this viewpoint, students who enjoy learning should participate in classroom activities more often and take more ownership over their learning. Emotional engagement sets the stage for developing cognitive and behavioral processes of student engagement.

The third possibility suggests bidirectional relations among the organizational constructs of engagement, with each dimension influencing the others cyclically. For example, enjoyment of learning or high emotional engagement may lead to greater use of self-regulated learning strategies or cognitive engagement and greater behavioral engagement within the classroom. This increased behavioral participation and use of cognitive strategies to improve performance may elicit positive feedback from classmates and teachers, further increasing enjoyment of learning, and so on. With reciprocal relations, each process reinforces and feeds into the others. For researchers to understand the developmental progression of engagement over time, they should tease apart the unique versus compounded effects of each dimension of engagement.

Longitudinal Research Across Developmental Periods

Some research on how student engagement unfolds and changes over time has shown average declines in various indicators of engagement throughout adolescence and in the transition to secondary school ( Wang & Eccles, 2012a , 2012b ), but other studies have shown heterogeneity in engagement patterns across subgroups of individuals ( Archambault et al., 2009 ; Janosz et al., 2008 ; Li & Lerner, 2011 ). However, we know little about developmental trajectories of engagement spanning early childhood to late adolescence. Many studies track engagement only in early adolescence across a span of 3 or 4 years. Because the ability to become a self-regulated learner, set goals, and monitor progress advances as children mature and become active agents in their own learning, student engagement may take different forms in elementary school than it does in subsequent years ( Fredricks et al., 2004 ). Researchers should investigate how younger versus older students think of engagement, how engagement changes across developmental periods, and whether sociocultural and psychological factors differentially shape engagement at the elementary and secondary levels.

Students’ Prior Learning Experiences

Researchers should also explore the role of students’ previous learning experiences in shaping engagement. When students are confronted with new academic challenges, the emotions and cognitions attached to previous experiences should influence how they adjust or cope with these challenges. In particular, engagement and academic achievement decline during school transitions (e.g., elementary to middle school, middle school to high school), which can be stressful experiences for many students ( Eccles et al., 1993 ; Pekrun, 2006 ). Students with prior experiences of failure in school may be especially vulnerable to the alienating effects of school transitions. How do we discontinue students’ negative feelings about schoolwork and reengage them in their education? How do we maintain positive and engaging experiences for students through every grade level and every transition? Using students’ prior learning experiences to break the cycle of disengagement and strengthen the cycle of continuous interest and engagement could inform interventions, particularly during crucial transitory periods when students are most vulnerable to feelings of isolation, boredom, or alienation.

Intervention

Despite the malleability of student engagement and the connection between developmental contexts and engagement, very few theory- and evidence-based preventative programs have been developed, implemented, and tested on a large scale. A few interventions have increased student engagement. For example, Check & Connect, an evidence-based intervention program, has reduced rates of dropout and truancy, particularly for students at high risk of school failure ( Reschly & Christenson, 2012 ). Randomized control trials of schoolwide positive behavioral support programs have also improved student engagement and achievement, reducing discipline referrals and suspensions ( Horner et al., 2009 ; Ward & Gersten, 2013 ). However, many programs are small, intensive interventions that have not been implemented on a larger scale, raising concerns about implementation fidelity and reduced effectiveness. Many interventions also rely on one dose of services and track developmental changes over a short period, making it difficult to infer long-term benefits.

We need to develop comprehensive programs that adapt to the unique needs of individuals receiving services. Preventative programs often rely on one-size-fits-all models, so subgroups of students may not be served properly. Although universal interventions are beneficial for students in general, targeted programs might be more effective for students at greater risk of academic or psychological problems. Therefore, interventions should be implemented at many levels, incorporating a universal program for students in general and more selected services for at-risk students.

Engagement Across Contexts

We should also explore the relative alignment of educational messages, values, and goals across contexts and how this compatibility influences student engagement. Teachers, parents, and peers are not always in tune with each other over educational values, and these conflicting messages may impair how students engage fully with school. For example, parents might endorse educational excellence as a priority, whereas peers may endorse academic apathy. In these situations, students may have to set aside their personal values and pursue or coordinate the values of others, or try to integrate their personal values with the values of the other group. Students’ ability to coordinate the messages, goals, and values from different agents in their social circles will also determine how they see themselves as learners.

We lack studies on how students reconcile inconsistencies in these messages across groups and how it affects their engagement. If peer groups promote antiachievement goals that are directly in conflict with the educational ideals transmitted by parents, will students conform to peer norms or seek out friends with achievement values that are more aligned with the values endorsed by their families? Is misalignment of educational goals across social contexts a risk factor for school dropout, particularly among students from disadvantaged backgrounds? Researchers need to address this area to help students cope with the inconsistent messages about education in their social circles and to consolidate a stronger academic identity.

Student Character and Engagement

Although researchers have examined how contextual, sociocultural, and motivational factors influence student engagement, the influence of student character or personality factors is less well understood. Research on the Big Five personality traits has found conscientiousness, an indicator of perseverance, to be the most consistent predictor of academic achievement ( Poropat, 2009 ).

Persistence has been examined through grit , a characteristic that entails working passionately and laboriously to achieve a long-term goal, and persisting despite challenges, setbacks, or failures ( Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, & Kelly, 2007 ). Individuals with grit are more likely to exert effort to prepare and practice to achieve their goals, leading them to be more successful than individuals who use less effortful strategies ( Duckworth, Kirby, Tsukayama, Berstein, & Ericsson, 2011 ).

Nevertheless, we know little about how personality traits might interact with environmental contexts to shape student engagement. Additionally, researchers have yet to examine how profiles of personality traits might interact with each other to influence student engagement. More nuanced research in these areas will aid in the development of learning strategies and educational contexts that may yield the most successful outcomes for various personality types.

Beyond Academic Engagement

Research on student engagement has focused on academic engagement or academic-related activities. Although academic experiences are critical determinants of educational success, school is also a place where students socialize with their friends and engage in nonacademic activities. Focusing exclusively on academic engagement neglects the school’s role as a developmental context in which students engage in a wide range of academic, social, and extracurricular activities that shape their identities as academically capable, socially integrated individuals who are committed to learning. For example, students who struggle with academic learning but are athletic may experience more engagement on the football field than in the classroom. Through participating in these types of nonacademic social activities, students build skills and learn life lessons such as collaborating as a team and becoming a leader. Thus, students’ schooling experiences should involve many forms of engagement, including academic, social, and extracurricular engagement. More research is needed to integrate these forms of engagement in school and examine how they interact to influence students’ academic and socioemotional well-being collectively.

Since its conception more than two decades ago, research on student engagement has permeated the fields of psychology and education. Over this period, we have learned much about engagement. We know that engagement can be measured as a multidimensional construct, including both observable and unobservable phenomena. We have come to appreciate the importance of engagement in preventing dropout and promoting academic success. We also understand that engagement is responsive to variations in classroom and family characteristics.

But in spite of the accrued knowledge on engagement, we have barely scratched the surface in understanding how engagement and disengagement can affect academic development, and how engagement unfolds over time by tracking interactions across contexts, dimensions, and levels. We also cannot dismiss the personal traits and affective states that students bring to the classroom, which may influence engagement regardless of the supportive nature of the environment. We lack knowledge about the extent to which large-scale interventions can produce long-term improvements in engagement across diverse groups. As we move forward with engagement research, we must apply what we have learned and focus on aspects that warrant further exploration. The insight this research provides will allow educators to create supportive learning environments in which diverse groups of students not only stay engaged but also experience the academic learning and success that is a byproduct of continuous engagement.

Acknowledgments

This project was supported by Grant DRL1315943 from the National Science Foundation and Grant DA034151-02 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institute of Health to Ming-Te Wang.

Contributor Information

Ming-Te Wang, School of Education, Learning Research and Development Center, Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh.

Jessica Degol, School of Education, University of Pittsburgh.

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Essential questions to enhance student engagement

Stacy Bewley

Imagine the perfect day in your classroom. What comes to mind? Flawlessly executed lesson plans? Well-behaved students? High levels of achievement? Student engagement? Is one of these more important than the others?

While lesson planning, classroom management and mastery of content are significant at every level, I think most teachers would agree that student engagement is the key ingredient to the perfect school day.

But how do we define student engagement? In reality, true student engagement is a multi-layered combination of the student, the teacher, the learning environment and the content. Though consistently achieving high levels of student engagement may seem as elusive as a perfect day, with intentionality, it is within the reach of classroom teachers.

John Hattie of the Visible Learning website and authors Robert Marzano, Debra Pickering and Tammy Heflebower of “ The Highly Engaged Classroom ,” suggest that teachers should examine each lesson from the students’ lens. The authors recommend that teachers consider four questions from the students’ perspective:

• How do I feel?
• Am I interested?
• Is this important?
• Can I do this?

Planning with these questions in mind increases the likelihood of student engagement in the classroom.

How do I feel? In Visible Learning , Hattie claims that student achievement from previous years has a significant impact on student learning in our classrooms. That makes sense, right? But Hattie continues, “Our job as teachers is to mess this up, by planning ways in which to accelerate the growth of those who start behind.” We can do this, in part, through responsive teaching and adjusting the pacing of instruction.

Our students’ emotional states, motivation levels, interest and other outside stressors all play a part in learning. While we can’t control much of what students bring to the classroom in terms of emotions, we can control the climate of the instructional setting, which plays an important role in how students feel when they enter our classrooms. If we are successful in considering the following, our students are safe to learn, to make mistakes and to grow.

• Pacing and Transitions – Establish clear, practiced routines and include frequent opportunities to discuss the learning. Conduct frequent formative assessments in order to determine and respond to student needs.
• Physical Movement – Incorporate physical movement into the day to infuse energy, to create physical representations of the content (i.e. vote with your feet, human graph), and to respond to questions. Movement helps students reset their brains and refocus their attention.
• Intensity and Enthusiasm – Teachers set the tone in the classroom and in each lesson. Our excitement, energy and positive attitudes (or lack thereof) are contagious.
• Humor – Funny news clips, headlines, quotes and personal anecdotes are potential material to introduce learning or help students make connections.
• Building Positive Teacher-Student Relationships and Student-Student Relationships – Establish a safe, respectful classroom climate where students can expect to be accepted and treated fairly.

Am I interested? Students encounter a constant stream of information competing to enter into their sensory, working or permanent memory. Marzano, Pickering and Heflebower write that each memory stage varies in purpose, with information being stored in the sensory stage temporarily, in the working stage a bit longer to give students time to process, and in permanent memory as stored experiences.

Where information is ultimately stored is directly connected to the level of interest. Here are a few tactics to build interest in a lesson.

• Using games and inconsequential competition – Utilize flexible grouping so that students are not always working with the same peer(s), and ensure that not everything is graded. Sometimes we just want students to engage in the learning without the pressure of a grade.
• Initiating friendly controversy – Consider using a class vote, debate or town hall to encourage students to take a side and defend a claim. Asking students to assume a different position than their own also can deepen their understanding of information.
• Presenting unusual information – Use current events, fun facts and guest speakers to pique student interest.
• Questioning to increase response rates – Call on students randomly so they are poised to participate, increase wait time after questions and utilize simultaneous individual responses (response cards, whiteboards, technology, etc.).

Is this important? Our students want to know that what we are teaching them is important in their lives. Whether it be a connection to a real-world problem or directly tied to their college and career goals, establishing the importance of the content is a critical piece of the learning experience for students. Some of the ways we can do this are discussed below.

Connecting to Students’ Lives

• Comparison Tasks – Encourage students to consider physical characteristics, processes, timelines, cause-and-effect relationships, psychological characteristics, fame or notoriety to help them develop deeper understanding of the content. We can incorporate comparison tasks into a variety of content, including language arts (i.e. character and plot analyses), humanities (i.e. musical and artistic styles, period timelines), social studies and science.
• Connecting to Students’ Life Ambitions – Give students choice in research projects, reading content and assessment to increase ownership in their learning. Perhaps learners could research a career of interest to them, places they might like to visit or live, or the cost of living independently.

Encouraging Application of Knowledge

• Cognitive Challenges – Present students with opportunities to engage in decision making, problem solving, experimental inquiry and investigation. Directly involving students in activities designed to develop critical thinking results in deeper understanding of the content.
• Choice – Provide options for tasks, products, goals and behavior. We can often be proactive in maintaining student engagement by allowing them to choose the order in which to complete tasks, providing a menu of options for a completed project (i.e. create a PowerPoint, write a commercial, design a book jacket), letting them contract for a grade based on work completion and/or difficulty of task, and involving students in setting expectations for classroom behavior.
• Present Real-World Applications – Ask students to generate ideas for real-world problems and provide a structure for the process of creating possible solutions. Engaging students in this way builds their understanding of community resources and protocols and develops critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Can I do this? This is perhaps the most important of Marzano, Pickering and Heflebower’s questions, for if the answer is “No,” everything else is of little value. It is critical for us as classroom teachers to build the self-efficacy of our students, to teach them to set goals, monitor their own progress, and to identify their strengths and areas of growth.

Hattie defines self-efficacy as the confidence students have in their own abilities to make learning happen. Many of our students will need our help in building this confidence, particularly when developing persistence and overcoming academic or personal obstacles. Teachers can foster self-efficacy skills by incorporating practices which encourage students to reflect on their learning.

• Tracking student progress – Allowing students to track their data over time in data notebooks and including them in academic and behavioral goal-setting increases their ownership and efficacy. A visual graph of their reading fluency improvement or math fact mastery may be a more powerful tool than verbal feedback or a grade on a paper.
• Using Effective Verbal Feedback – Provide timely, specific feedback to students, focusing on strengths and areas of growth. Teacher feedback should serve to encourage, guide and challenge students to improve their performance on a given task. If we are to positively impact student achievement through feedback, we have to deliver it promptly, while ideas are fresh and changes can be made.
• Providing Examples of Self-Efficacy – Sometimes students need to be reminded of their own previous successes in order to persevere through a difficult task or a plateau in their progress. Another way to encourage students is through the personal stories of others’ trials and dedication to attain a goal.
• Teaching Self-Efficacy – We have the chance to tear down fixed mindsets and reframe negative thoughts by modeling reflection and analysis of our own strengths and opportunities for growth, and providing students with the framework and space to do the same.

In ” Research Proof Points–Better Student Engagement Improves Student Learning ,” veteran teacher Kathy Dyer writes that researchers have studied the relationship between engagement and achievement for decades, establishing student engagement as a predictor of achievement, desirable classroom behaviors and graduation rates. The stakes are high. Lack of engagement comes with a high cost – one we simply cannot afford to pay.

Stacy Crawford Bewley is an education recovery specialist with the Kentucky Department of Education. She is a former high school special education teacher with 13 years of classroom experience. Bewley taught English and reading in both the resource and collaborative settings. She is a fellow of the Louisville Writing Project and is completing doctoral coursework at the University of Louisville.

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To Increase Student Engagement, Focus on Motivation

Teachers can motivate middle and high school students by providing structure while also allowing them some control over their learning.

A 2018 Gallup study found that as students get older, they become less engaged, or “ involved, enthusiastic, and committed .” The study contained some alarming findings: In fifth grade, most students (74 percent) report high levels of engagement with school. However, by middle school, only half of students are engaged, and by high school the number of engaged students shrinks to about one-third. 

Student engagement continued to be a pressing concern for parents and educators during and after the pandemic. Approximately half of parents (45 percent), 77 percent of administrators, and 81 percent of teachers said that keeping students engaged was difficult during remote learning. In addition, 94 percent of educators considered student engagement to be the most important metric to look at when determining student success. Gallup found that students who are engaged with school not only report achieving higher grades but also feel more hopeful about their future. 

Student motivation

Engagement and motivation are separate, related, but often confused. Motivation is the driving force that causes a student to take action. Engagement is the observable behavior or evidence of that motivation. Motivation is necessary for engagement, but successful engagement could also help students to feel motivated in the future. 

In my book The Independent Learner , I discuss how self-regulated learning strategies help students to increase their motivation and willingness to engage in learning because they create feelings of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. According to research by Ryan and Deci, these are the three components that facilitate motivation :

• Autonomy is a “sense of initiative and ownership in one’s actions.”
• Competence is a “feeling of mastery” and a sense that with effort a student can “succeed and grow.”
• Relatedness is when the school setting “conveys respect and caring” that results in the student feeling “a sense of belonging and connection.”

Motivating students in the classroom

It is important not to confuse engagement with entertainment. In an EdWeek survey , researchers found that the entertaining activities that teachers expect to engage students are not necessarily working. While the majority of teachers who had increased their use of digital games assumed that games would engage students, only 27 percent of students reported feeling more engaged when digital games were involved. In addition, 30 percent of students said learning was actually less engaging. 

So what creates engagement? Gallup found that students who strongly agreed with the following two statements were 30 times more likely to report high levels of engagement with school:

• My school is “committed to building the strengths of each student.”
• I have “at least one teacher who makes me excited about the future.”

In other words, engaged students recognize that they have the support of caring adults who are willing to partner with them in their learning. 

Not all classrooms create these conditions. Controlling classrooms lower autonomy and motivation and increase student frustration. In controlling classrooms, students avoid challenges because they are afraid of failure. They work toward external rewards or to avoid possible anxiety or shame caused by mistakes. The teacher controls the answers and learning materials and uses language like “should” or “have to,” and students feel pressured to behave and achieve.

In contrast, creating classroom environments where students feel autonomy, competence, and relatedness helps students to maintain motivation and increase their engagement in school activities. Classrooms that foster motivation and increase engagement are high in structure but low in top-down control . These classrooms have the following qualities.

Supportive: Teachers support autonomy by listening and attempting to understand and respond to students’ perspectives. They look at what a student can currently do and where they need to go to reach the standard or objective, and they help the student by building scaffolds or supports to bridge the gap. This makes achievement toward grade-level content possible, even for learners who are not quite there yet.

Personal and individualized: Students feel like they are able to customize their assignments in order to explore their own interests. Students can also be taught to make their own connections to what they are learning through creating their own hooks for a lesson . Recognizing students’ unique qualities and special talents, getting to know what interests students and incorporating these interests into lessons or assignments, and reaching out to parents with a note or email when a student does something well are all strategies that I use to make learning personal and increase relatedness in the classroom. 

Structured and goal-oriented: When teachers give students strategies, provide frequent feedback, and show them how to use those strategies effectively, students are motivated by observing their own progress. Teachers can provide a rationale or standard and guide students in setting short-term mastery goals for each required task. They can also help students to align their daily actions and effort with the results they are hoping to achieve by making a process plan . I have found that when students graph their own progress or use their process plan as a checklist, this makes growth visual and allows students to see the steps they are accomplishing each day toward their goal. In addition, clear expectations, consistency in classroom structure, clear rules, and set routines are all important. 

Collaborative: Teachers provide students with choices and opportunities to partner with the teacher in their learning experiences and show ownership in the tasks that are assigned to them. When teachers encourage students to begin to make choices and take responsibility for their own learning, students see a purpose in school activities. One way to do this is through using self-assessment to prompt reflection on strategy use. I have students analyze their graded assignments to decide what strategies to keep and what to do differently next time. When students see errors as a signal that they need to reflect on the process and learning strategies they used, they realize there are no real mistakes, just opportunities for learning.

Although the pandemic has been difficult, the majority of students (69 percent) report feeling hopeful about the future. Students who are hopeful and engaged are less likely to get suspended or expelled, have chronic absenteeism, skip school, or drop out of school. When educators put effort into the goal of creating a school environment guided by student engagement, motivation, and autonomy, students can see their own growth. This creates an excitement for learning that helps students to maintain hope for the future even through difficult circumstances.

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Increasing Student Engagement

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The challenges of teaching diverse learners in varying learning contexts puts into perspective the importance of student engagement to the learning experience. Consider using the strategies below to help students increase their engagement with learning activities, build confidence in their community of learning, and increase their comprehension of the course material.

Classroom activities should address student fears about learning

Compared to other aspects of college life, the classroom environment is inherently “a riskier one based on intellectual commitment and engagement” (Bauer, 2007), which can be intimidating for many students. A key step to promoting student engagement is recognizing and addressing the fear of failure and judgment by both instructors and peers.

Ask open-ended questions

Questions that ask students to justify an opinion or interpret a reading are more likely to elicit responses even from those who do not know exactly how to define a term or derive a formula because there is no risk of “failing” the question. Because open-ended questions can have multiple correct answers or valid perspectives, they can also generate more interesting discussions. Engagement-based questions can require students to be more diligent in their readings and homework as these questions require a deeper understanding than simply knowing a correct answer. 

You can combine multiple types of questions to both generate discussion and check for student comprehension. For example, consider starting off with a more open-ended question to invite engagement. Then, ask more “fact-finding” follow-up questions to help refine, contextualize, and nuance those responses to ensure students understand the material.

Ask students what they know about a topic before instruction

Background-knowledge probes are useful because they can help instructors decide what to cover in limited time, ensuring that subsequent meetings of the course will better engage students, and can even generate discussion in the moment.

Use more ungraded or credit-upon-completion assignments

Short reflections on class material or participation in classroom discussions can easily be turned into credit-upon-completion components of a course. These types of informal assignments hold students accountable for doing work and can prepare students to think critically in advance of more important graded assessments without presenting a significant intellectual risk for them or a grading burden for instructors. 

Encourage students to take more active roles in collaborative learning and teaching

Many studies underscore the effectiveness of learning techniques that utilize student experts or require students to practice teaching what they learn. These philosophies can be integrated into course activities through a variety of methods.

Incorporate student discussion time into activities

Instead of having students solve an example problem on their own, consider asking students to form small groups or try activities such as think-pair-share to work through it. In addition to boosting engagement, group discussions give students the opportunity to explain to others their reasoning and problem-solving processes, which helps promote metacognition. Small groups work equally well for discussing open-ended questions and problems with explicit solutions. 

Have students model or explain to other students

When students begin to grasp a concept in a difficult lecture for the first time, they may feel like a light bulb has just turned on, bringing clarity to their understanding of a topic. This is a great opportunity to ask these students to explain it to the rest of the class and take other people’s questions, interrupting only to correct or clarify information.

Build peer review into open-ended assignments

While peer review can be beneficial for increasing engagement, students are most accepting when instructors inform them of the importance and potential benefits of participating in such activities. Take time to establish peer review norms and expectations, so that students can trust they will be treated with respect and be more open to feedback. Ask students to account for how and why they incorporated the feedback and when they did not. Consider how and when you give your feedback on student work so that it does not unintentionally undercut the peer review process. If your feedback comes after a draft that incorporates peer feedback, that is an opportunity for you to reinforce the value of that peer feedback by pointing to places where they successfully integrated the feedback or places where they should have.   

Use activities that provide students with a diverse range of engagement opportunities 

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework which strives to capture the diversity of student learning preferences and is applicable to any field or subject. Consider the following strategies while designing learning activities to best reach students who may possess a variety of engagement styles.

Offer multiple versions of activities or assignments

Information is only accessible to students when it engages their cognition , so it is essential to give students both autonomy in choosing how to engage with the material as well as a diversity of methods for them to learn and assess their skills. Consider utilizing information from multiple types of sources or modalities when giving lectures or allowing students the freedom to choose different types of projects for a final assessment .

Encourage students to reflect upon the learning process

Metacognition is useful for student learning and mastery as well as building and sustaining a motivation to learn. Consider providing students with feedback on key assignments as well as creating activities in which students can conduct self-assessment with a variety of different techniques. The Canvas Commons has an Exit Ticket module with a number of examples you can build into your course. 

Emphasize the importance of course objectives in assignments

While all students appreciate understanding the significance or utility of their course material, some students especially benefit from continued reinforcement of course objectives to boost engagement. Assignments should allow learners to understand or restate the goal of the activity as well as offer relevant examples for how the information gained can be applied which connects to students’ backgrounds and interests.

Research, scholarship of teaching and learning, and online research consulted

• Improved Student Engagement in Higher Education’s Next Normal   
• Implementation of a Learning Assistant Program Improves Student Performance on Higher-Order Assessments 
• The Power of Active Learning During Remote Instruction 
• Student Perceptions on the Importance of Engagement Strategies in the Online Learning Environment
• Stepanyan, K., Mather, R., Jones, H., & Lusuardi, C. (2009). Student Engagement with Peer Assessment: A Review of Pedagogical Design and Technologies . Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 367–375. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-03426-8_44
• Bauer, D. M. (2007). Another F word: Failure in the classroom . Pedagogy, 7 (2), 157-170.
• Provide Multiple Means of Engagement

Resources related to student engagement

Classroom Q&A

With larry ferlazzo.

In this EdWeek blog, an experiment in knowledge-gathering, Ferlazzo will address readers’ questions on classroom management, ELL instruction, lesson planning, and other issues facing teachers. Send your questions to [email protected]. Read more from this blog.

Nine Strategies for Promoting Student Engagement

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(This is the third post in a four-part series. You can see Part One here and Part Two here. )

The question-of-the-week is:

Some research suggests that as students get older, their engagement with school tends to decrease. How can schools combat this trend?

Part One ‘s contributors were Janice Wyatt-Ross, Dr. PJ Caposey, Michelle Shory, Irina McGrath, and Matt Renwick. Janice was also a guest on my 10-minute BAM! Radio Show . You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows here.

In Part Two , Scott Bayer, Amanda Lescas, Ryan Huels, and Joy Hamm shared their thoughts.

Today, Tonia Gibson, Katie Shenk, Libby Woodfin, Jayson W. Richardson, and Luiza Mureseanu offer their observations.

‘At the core are student/teacher relationships’

Tonia Gibson, a managing consultant at McREL International, is a former Australian teacher and school leader. At McREL, she focuses on helping schools use an inside-out, curiosity-based approach to develop sustainable and continuous improvement:

To truly answer this question, we need to understand what student engagement is. For me, student engagement is closely linked to motivation; both intrinsic and extrinsic factors play a role in how interested students are at school.

We also know that student motivation tends to decrease as students move through and up grade levels. Most students in 2nd grade appear happy to be at school and in most classrooms look to be highly engaged in learning, whereas the scene in some 10th grade classrooms might look very different, with students staring at their phones or listening to music through hidden ear pods. A Gallup survey of some 500,000 students found that roughly 8 in 10 elementary students felt “engaged” in school—that is, attentive, curious, and optimistic about their learning—yet by high school, that number had plummeted to just 4 in 10.

Elementary teachers are able to use a myriad of strategies that are almost guaranteed to engage students in learning. Short demonstrations in science or even a brainteaser can spark a child’s curiosity about a topic. Most K–5 students willingly and openly ask questions of their teachers and each other when they need further clarification or help.

Middle school teachers will probably paint a very different picture. Student engagement appears to decrease due to a number of observable factors, including the shift in teacher/student relationships, increased academic demands, and, not to be dismissed, the biological and social changes that students are navigating.

Most high school teachers will tell you that student engagement at this level can (mostly) be linked to a student’s personal motivations about their future life away from or after high school. Students might be motivated to get good grades so that they can enter higher education, or they may be aiming for a technical college or career and choose their pathway accordingly. But then there are also students who seem disengaged at school for reasons that are harder to address, like homelessness, generational poverty, or lack of self-belief or confidence that they can succeed.

In light of all of this, what teachers really need to master is knowing and understanding what motivates their students—in and out of school. Knowing your students and their interests can help teachers become more intentional when planning for learning. Pairing that knowledge with a knowledge of which research-supported, high-impact strategies will be most effective with your students can help teachers create classroom environments where students display increased interest, motivation, and engagement in learning.

At the core are student/teacher relationships. Engaging students is not about being entertaining, providing loads of experiments that blow up, or having a colorful slide show to appeal to students who love screen time. Great teachers know that before their students can learn, they need to build positive relationships and shared understandings about what the purpose of school (or their class) is, and work with students to set realistic personal goals that help them develop and internalize their purpose for being at school.

Once these shared expectations and understandings have been established, teachers should be savvy in ensuring they provide purposeful, transparent, and engaging learning opportunities for students. Some excellent practices teachers should consider are:

Ensure clarity and purpose for student learning. For students to be engaged and motivated to learn, they need to know what they are learning, why it is important, and how to be successful. Teachers should be mindful to ensure that their narrative around the “why” is crafted to connect with the students in front of them. If the purpose for the learning is merely grades, you might lose some students. But if it’s about getting a good grade and understanding and applying the learning to a real-world problem, then you’re engaging the whole class.

Create challenging learning tasks. Challenging learning tasks aren’t just lists of “hard” problems or the teacher setting high expectations. Learning tasks and activities that scaffold student learning, connect to the real world and/or the students’ experiences, and challenge students to use what they know to solve a problem or apply their knowledge to a new task will always be more engaging than assigning pages and pages of practice problems to prepare for a test.

Set up classroom structures that allow students to learn with and from each other. Learning is primarily a social activity. Babies learn to talk by listening and mimicking the people around them, while young children learn how to hit a baseball or skate by watching and getting feedback from others. Student should have the same opportunities at school. Students at your school may come from backgrounds where storytelling is a powerful way to learn. Or using a digital platform to create virtual learning communities where students can chat and share ideas online may be a way to encourage collaboration outside of our regular turn-and-talk classroom routines.

‘The Four Ts’

Katie Shenk is a lead curriculum designer for EL Education. Libby Woodfin is the director of publications for EL Education and an author of Learning That Lasts: Challenging, Engaging and Empowering Students with Deeper Instruction :

Learning is naturally engaging. When students begin kindergarten, when they learn to read and write, when numbers fall into place for them for the first time, it is exciting. Learning is fun!

But what happens after the primary grades? Students hang onto their joy for a while, but for many, it starts to slip as 4th or 5th grade rolls around. And middle school is a notoriously joyless time for far too many students. It doesn’t mean that all kids end up hating school (though some will), but the source of students’ engagement with school often changes.

Sometimes “achievement” in a traditional sense—grades, accolades from teachers or family members—is what engages students. Sometimes it’s social interactions. But some students will struggle in school and, as a result, are likely to disengage on some level. This may happen for students because learning is hard and their teachers have not found the right way to meet their needs, or because they feel that they don’t belong, that school is not a place where they fit in or where they can succeed.

The problem for educators to solve as students get older is to ensure that school remains a place of learning , not just of schooling . Students may go through the paces of school—doing their homework, answering questions in class—but that’s not necessarily learning and students may become more and more disengaged as they experience more schooling and less authentic learning. Students (even middle schoolers!) can still engage deeply with school, but they need authentic opportunities to learn deeply.

Designing Curriculum with the Four Ts

We use a simple framework called the Four Ts to consider how to combine topics, tasks, targets, and texts in a way that will truly engage students with their learning.

• The TOPIC teaches standards through real-world issues, original research, primary-source documents, and the opportunity to engage with the community, and they lend themselves to the creation of authentic tasks/products.
• The TASK gives students the opportunity to address authentic needs and an authentic audience related to the topic.
• Standards-aligned learning TARGETS are contextualized to the topic; they prepare students for and guide the task and ensure proper, deep analysis of the text.
• A worthy TEXT is chosen judiciously to ensure that it will help students build world knowledge, master specific standards, and learn about the topic.

Let’s look at a few examples of the Fours Ts in action. Note that one of the key themes in these examples is that students are engaged in purposeful work, and, because of that, they are motivated to dig in to complex and rigorous learning. They are engaged.

(We urge you to watch the accompanying videos, which tell each story in detail.)

Living History: 4th and 5th Grades

This video tells the story of 4th and 5th grade students at Silverton School in Silverton, Colo., who engaged in a semester-long study of local Chinese American history at the turn of the 20th century. Students created a new exhibit at their local history museum and rebuilt a local Chinese garden. This is a powerful example of students learning history “beyond the textbook” and putting their learning to use to make their community better. Students were engaged deeply because their learning had purpose and, as one student shared, “we had to learn with our heads and our hearts.”

Their teacher expertly wove together the Four Ts to design a compelling project from start to finish. Her framing of the topic as a “history mystery” piqued students’ curiosity out of the gate and her innovative use of texts included epitaphs from the local cemetery, museum gallery texts, and historical newspapers. Key literacy standards related to reading and synthesizing informational texts, writing informational texts, and speaking with and listening to experts and museum guests anchored the learning targets . The culminating task —the museum exhibit and garden—honored the history of the local community.

Community Faces: 6th Grade

This video features 6th graders from Interdistrict School for Arts and Communication in New London, Conn., working to break stereotypes associated with the label “immigrant” by telling the human story of immigration. Earning widespread local and national media coverage, these students produced a beautiful book filled with original photography and stories from people in their community who immigrated to the United States. Students spoke at the state Capitol and toured the Northeast with an exhibit of their learning. These students were motivated to learn deeply and do their best because they were working on behalf of immigrants in their community and presenting their work to multiple audiences.

This project is a beautiful example of the Four Ts in action. The topic engaged students in a real-world, contemporary issue that impacted their community and allowed them to do authentic, primary research with community members. Engagement in the task was high as students interviewed local immigrants and learned photography and interviewing skills from experts. Learning targets were standards-aligned and interdisciplinary, and the project incorporated work from all subject areas, including math. Students were eager to dig into complex texts , including primary texts, in order to prepare for their interviews and produce high-quality work for an authentic audience.

The Successes, Challenges, and Possibilities of Policing in the United States: 12th Grade

This video features seniors at Codman Academy in Boston preparing to write a research paper analyzing a critical component of policing in America. Their preparation involves reading a series of case studies and primary-source texts, as well as structured academic discussions, about policing practices in a variety of communities around the U.S. Their primary texts are The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander and the U.S. Department of Justice’s “Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department.” The beauty of the Four Ts in this video is the way that they weave together to give students access to a challenging text; those access points serve to engage students deeply in their learning.

The topic of policing in America is one that impacts the lives of the students in this class every day. This compelling topic, combined with a powerful primary-source text (the Ferguson report) inspires students to read and think critically. The task is a research paper, which is scaffolded by a series of academic discussions in which students grapple with their readings and analysis. Due to the nature of the text, which is incredibly dense, the teacher has designed lessons to ensure that students will be able to access it, make meaning from it, and learn from it. She has also designed tools for the students, such as note-catchers, that require them to capture evidence from the text, which they can use in their analysis. This is a key college- and career-ready skill aligned to standards and learning targets .

Measuring the wrong things

Jayson W. Richardson is a professor at the University of Denver and the department chair of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in the Morgridge College of Education. He has written over 100 scholarly articles, books chapters, and books focusing on technology, leadership, and change including a new book on Bringing Innovative Practices to Your School :

School leaders often worry about issues such as discipline, dropout rates, achievement, and academic progression. These are often viewed as the traditional measures of a student’s (and school’s) success. But these measures do not get at what might be the most problematic issue. These forward-facing measures are simply indicative of a deeper issue: student engagement. As such, efforts to address student engagement in P-12 schools, are often blurred by competing accountability measures.

Gallup (2016) conducted a survey of nearly 1 million students across the United States. They found that starting at 5 th grade, 74 percent of students reported to being engaged in school. By the 12 th grade, only 34 percent of students reported being engaged in school. These are alarming numbers given that by the time students leave our schools, nearly 7 out of 10 are generally disengaged in the learning process.

Looking at the Gallup (2016) data deeper, it is clear that the issue of a lack of engagement is indeed dire. Sixty percent of 5 th graders reported learning something interesting in school in the past 7 days. That level drops to 33 percent by the 12 th grade. When students were asked if they have fun at school, 47 percent of 5 th grades and just 20 percent of 12 th grades said yes. From these data, it is clear that we have more than half of our 5 th graders not having fun at schools and 4 out of 10 not even learning something interesting in school! By the time that student is ready to tackle the world, she spends 67 percent of the time not learning anything interesting in school and 80 percent of her time not having any fun.

It is the old adage of the “squeaky wheel gets the grease.” It is often harder to measure engagement so we measure academics, we measure dropouts, we measure attendance, we measure discipline, and so on. But deficiencies in these measures are likely a result of the majority of students being disengaged in their education. Nevertheless, recent research makes it clear that student engagement is significantly and positively linked to achievement, discipline, and behaviors. It is time we refocus our efforts on engaging students in learning.

COVID-19 has brought with it an array of schooling challenges around organizational change . We cannot overlook that. Some challenges are structural (e.g., devices, learning platforms, and internet access), some are human resources (e.g., teacher training), some are political (e.g., state policies and local technology-use policies), and yet others are symbolic (e.g., messaging coming from leaders about emergency remote learning). As leaders of schools in uncertain times where there is no normal, we must focus on the bigger picture. We must resist the urge to fix problems without focusing on the core issue: increasing student engagement. By putting students first, we might likely find innovative ways to “educate” students that we have never thought of before. In this time of the pandemic, let’s invent more engaging student experiences that might propel wholesale rethinking of what schooling can be.

Supporting young adults

Luiza Mureseanu is an instructional resource teacher, K-12, for ESL/ELD programs, in Peel DSB, Ontario, with over 17 years of teaching middle and high school students in Canada and Romania. She believes that all English-learners will be successful in schools that cultivate culturally and linguistically responsive practices:

Schools need to prepare a different approach in providing instructional support for older (18+) students using experiential learning and age-relevant curriculum. Older students naturally have a different level of interest in attending school, and their level of performance changes because their life priorities change.

Often, they are breadwinners for the household; having multiple jobs or even taking care of younger siblings forces them to slow down in their schooling. In fact, family circumstances or a complicated history of immigration often determines that they need to spend longer time in school to finish their credits. As a secondary school teacher, I know when my students are late to class or tired because of jobs or family commitments.

It is true that research indicates the correlation between getting older and the decreasing of school engagement, but there is no similar correlation between getting older and abandoning the interest in finishing school. In fact, when asked, older students indicate their desire to get their diploma. Therefore, schools need flexible programs to accommodate the learner, including modified timetable and relevant courses.

For example, some of the schools with larger clusters of older learners could provide alternate starting time in the morning. The model is not entirely new as some of the high schools with large hospitality and tech programs have that option already, and it works best for students who have a co-op course, a dual credit, or a workplace component on their timetable.

Another important step schools need to take will be to provide courses that are of interest for older students—particularly the elective courses. For example, some financial-literacy courses, family economics, or career courses need to be available for the older group. They should be provided with an opportunity to have some form of workplace component in their education and to get them involved in projects with community or local businesses.

Schools definitely need to provide more specific supports for this group. Ironically, students could attend high school in Ontario, Canada, until they are 21. In reality, there are just a few students who will remain in a regular day school after the age of 18. They either go to a continuing education program, sometime later in life, or drop out of school. Some groups are particularly affected—ELLs with a refugee background, students living below the poverty line, students with exceptionalities. School districts have the data that shows this trend, and they must prioritize the needs of this group.

Thanks to Tonia, Katie, Libby, Jayson, and Luiza for their contributions!

Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at [email protected] . When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo .

Education Week has published a collection of posts from this blog, along with new material, in an e-book form. It’s titled Classroom Management Q&As: Expert Strategies for Teaching .

Just a reminder; you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via email (The RSS feed for this blog, and for all Ed Week articles, has been changed by the new redesign—new ones won’t be available until late January). And if you missed any of the highlights from the first nine years of this blog, you can see a categorized list below.

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It Matters: 347,248 Student Voices About Engagement in School

How are students feeling about their learning and school data from cognia’s student engagement survey reveal actionable insights..

Between July 2020 and June 2021, 347,248 students from across the world shared their feelings about their engagement in school. The Cognia Student Engagement Survey (SES) was administered in 1,633 schools. U.S. students made up 94% of respondents; 6% of the students were enrolled in schools in the Middle East and Latin America.  

First introduced in 2017, the SES provides students an opportunity to voice how they feel about their classroom and school experiences. School personnel can use the survey results to learn about, reflect on, and respond to what students say about their experiences.

Three Engagement Domains

Behavioral Domain —Students’ efforts in the classroom

Cognitive Domain —Students’ investment in learning

Emotional Domain —Students’ emotions or feelings about their classroom and school

Three Types of Engagement

Committed —Students find personal meaning and value in tasks

Compliant —Students strive to meet learning expectations, follow rules, and actively avoid consequences

Disengaged —Students are unmotivated, actively avoid completing tasks, and have low participation

Why this survey matters

Before March 2020, educators had the opportunities to listen to, learn from, and observe students in “real time” in their classes, giving them access to a plethora of information about students’ needs and interests. This realtime access allowed educators to adjust school schedules, extracurricular activities, and classroom learning experiences to improve student engagement. However, after March 2020 having access to student voices was inconsistent and difficult, which makes the results of these student engagement surveys essential for moving forward in today’s uncertain world of schooling. Students want educators to listen and respond to their voices, and in this context, to their perspectives about engaging in school and their classrooms.

What their voices tell us

Collectively, the 347,248 student voices revealed that:

• Across all grade bands and domains, more than 88% of students indicated they were committed or compliant in their engagement with their learning or with their school.
• Across all grade bands, about half of the students indicated cognitive commitment to their academic work and learning, such as taking initiative and finding ways to make the assignment relevant to their lives.
• About half of the students across all grade bands responded to items that indicated their cognitive compliant engagement, such as getting good grades or performing well on tests to please their teachers and families.
• Elementary student responses indicated higher levels of behavioral commitment when compared to older students in areas such as the effort they put forth to complete their work.
• Elementary students also indicated strong committed emotional engagement regarding their positive feelings about their school and classroom and taking ownership to stay positive when compared to middle and high school student responses.  

About one-third of middle and high school students indicated compliant behavioral engagement, such as demonstrating certain behaviors to please their teachers and families and meet their expectations.  

Middle and high school student responses were almost evenly distributed in the committed and compliant levels of the emotional domain, indicating that about half of the students were committed to generating their own connections to others and creating a sense of belonging.  

Student Engagement by Domain and Grade, AY21

Engagement changes with grade-level bands

According to Goldstein, Boxer, & Randolph (2015), students’ level of engagement decreases during grade-level transitions, such as from elementary to middle and middle to high school. Student voices from the survey confirmed that adapting to a new school, grade structure, or expectations were among the variables that could decrease students’ level of engagement when they matriculate to middle school and high school. One possibility for the decline in engagement that middle and high school students experienced during the twelve-month period could be attributed to increased screen time for instruction. This is most salient in the behavioral domain, as illustrated by the 21% drop from elementary to middle school.  

Behavioral engagement percentages

Engagement increases when students invest in learning

Cognitive engagement is directly linked to achievement and is a stronger predictor for learning than the other two engagement domains (Barlow, Brown, Lutz, et al., 2020; Pickering, 2017). Students who are invested in their own learning generally exceed expectations set by their teachers and families and meet new challenges as opportunities to make connections with existing knowledge. On the other hand, compliant students typically respond to extrinsic rewards, such as being recognized for completing their work or getting good grades but fall short of taking initiative to immerse themselves more deeply in the learning. It is reasonable that students felt more compliant during this survey period because they were more reliant on their parents, family members, and other people to monitor their learning and completion of assignments. Large percentages of compliant student responses in the cognitive domain were demonstrated in elementary (46%), middle (47%), and high school (47%).  

Cognitive engagement percentages

Engagement is enhanced through positive relationships

Research conducted as far back as 1997 (Birch & Ladd, 1997) indicates that students with positive teacher and peer relationships—meaning they feel connected—are generally more engaged in their learning activities. Emotional commitment was shown to be highest for elementary school students (70%) and notably lower for middle and high school students (46% and 45%). Older students shared that they felt less connected with people and that their opportunities to form relationships were challenging. Perhaps the decrease from committed to compliant engagement in the Emotional Domain could be attributed to the unusual circumstances related to COVID-19 when students had fewer group and collaborative learning activities that help develop relationships among students and teachers.

Emotional engagement levels by grade-level

What educators can do

The evidence-based strategies presented below can increase learners’ level of engagement in more than one domain and are appropriate for learners in grades 3–12. This is not an exhaustive list.

Association of Independent Schools New South Wales (n.d.). Engagement strategies: Pair-Share. https://www.aisnsw.edu.au/teachers-and-staff/teaching-and-learning/literacy-and-numeracy/foundations-of-effective-instruction/engagement-strategies/pair-share

Barlow, A., Brown, S., Lutz, B. Pitterson, N., Hunsu, N., & Adesope, O. (2020). Developing the student course cognitive engagement instrument (SCCEI) for college engineering courses. IJ STEM Ed, 7 (22). https://stemeducationjournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40594-020-00220-9 

Birch, S.H., & Ladd, G.W. (1977). The teacher-child relationship and children’s early school adjustment. Journal of School Psychology, 35 , 61-80.  

Blackburn, B. & Witzel, B. S. (2018). Rigor in the RTI and MTSS classroom: Practical tools and strategies . (1st ed.). Routledge.  

EL Education (n.d.). Helping all learners: Tiering . https://eleducation.org/resources/helping-all-learners-tiering  

Goldstein, S., Boxer, P., & Randolph, E. (2015). Middle school transition stress: Links with academic performance, motivation, and school experiences. Contemporary School Psychology, 2015 (19) , 21-29.  

Klug, E. (2011). Student-led circle of power and respect—The Origins Program .

Lochhead, J. & Whimbey, A. (1987). Teaching analytical reasoning through thinking aloud pair problem solving. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 1987(30 ), 73–92. https://doi.org/10.1002/tl.37219873007  

Pickering, J.D. (2017). Cognitive engagement: A more reliable proxy for learning? Medical Science Educator, 27 , 821-823. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40670-017-0447-8  

Silver, H., Abla, C., Boutz, A., & Perini, M. (2018). Tools for classroom instruction that works . McRel International.  

Student Engagement - Science topic

• asked a question related to Student Engagement
• 14 Jul 2024

• 1 Sept 2024
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• Personalized Learning: AI algorithms can analyze individual learning patterns and preferences. Personalized learning platforms powered by AI can provide tailored content, adaptive assessments, and learning experiences based on each student's needs and progress.
• Adaptive Learning Platforms: AI-driven adaptive learning systems adjust the difficulty and pace of content based on individual student performance. This helps keep students challenged but not overwhelmed, fostering a more engaging and productive learning experience.
• Chatbots for Support: AI-powered chatbots can provide instant support to students, answering questions related to coursework, assignments, and general information. Chatbots contribute to a responsive learning environment, helping students get timely assistance and guidance.
• Automated Feedback: AI tools can automate the process of providing feedback on assessments and assignments. Timely and constructive feedback helps students understand their strengths and areas for improvement, promoting ongoing engagement in the learning process.
• Gamification and Simulation: AI can be used to create gamified learning experiences or simulations that make learning more interactive and enjoyable. Gamification elements, such as badges, rewards, and competitive elements, can motivate students and enhance their engagement.
• Predictive Analytics: AI algorithms can analyze student data to predict academic performance, identify potential challenges, and recommend interventions. Early identification of at-risk students allows educators to provide targeted support, increasing overall student engagement and success.
• Virtual Assistants: Virtual assistants powered by AI can assist students with administrative tasks, scheduling, and reminders. These tools help students stay organized, manage their time effectively, and reduce stress, contributing to a positive learning experience.
• Language Processing for Feedback: AI technologies, including natural language processing (NLP), enable automated analysis of written assignments and provide detailed feedback on language use, structure, and content. This type of feedback supports students in improving their writing skills and overall engagement in the learning process.
• Smart Content Recommendations: AI algorithms can recommend relevant and supplementary learning materials based on students' interests, performance, and preferences. Tailored content recommendations encourage exploration and further engagement with the subject matter.
• Emotional Intelligence Applications: AI tools with emotional intelligence capabilities can analyze students' emotional states through facial recognition or sentiment analysis. Understanding students' emotional well-being allows for more personalized support, creating a positive and supportive learning environment.

• 14 Dec 2023
• Customized Learning : Generates specific content for EFL & ESP, enriching resources available to educators.
• Interactive Practice : Offers a dynamic platform for EFL & ESP students to practice language skills.
• Accessibility : Broadens access to learning, especially in diverse and remote contexts.
• Support for Instructors : Aids in curriculum planning and reduces repetitive teaching tasks.
• Changing Teacher-Student Dynamics : Overuse may impact traditional teaching methods and student engagement.
• Content Depth : AI-generated materials might lack the nuanced understanding of a seasoned educator.
• Ethical Implications : Raises issues like data privacy and equal access in educational settings.
• Information Accuracy : There's a risk of misinformation due to AI's limitations in context understanding.
• Thoughtful Integration : ChatGPT should complement, not replace, traditional teaching, balancing technology with human insight.
• Critical Use : Educators should critically evaluate AI use, considering its benefits and limitations in an applied linguistic context.

• 15 Dec 2023
• 5 Recommendations

• 12 Nov 2023
• Section 1. AI as a Catalyst for the Higher Education Ecosystem and Value proposition
• Section 2. Threats, Opportunities, Challenges and Risks on the Adoption of AI in HE
• Section 3. A new era of AI-enabled instructional and learning strategic, engagement and interactivity in Higher Education
• Section 4. Enrichment of Learning Experience and Social Impact through AI in Higher Education
• Section 5. Administrative and Ethical issues: Managing AI as a core function of Higher Education Process
• Section 6. ChatGPT, Generative AI, OpenAI special focus: Hype, Functional and Strategic Perspectives on its use on HE institutions.
• AI as a catalyst for the Higher Education Ecosystem
• AI as an enabler of Digital Transformation in Higher Education: Threats, Promises, implementation strategies and intended impact
• AI as an innovative approach to next generation instructional methods and learning strategies?
• The context of Disrupting Education: How Artificial Intelligence revolutionizes the higher education landscape
• Deployment of Artificial Intelligence in the value chain of the Higher Education.
• The role of the AI in the implementation of Active Learning in STEAM courses in Higher Education
• Promoting interactivity, inclusion and engagement in Higher Education
• Enhancing interactive learning experiences and student engagement through ChatGPT, Generative AI, OpenAI
• The role of ChatGPT, Generative AI, OpenAI in Revolutionizing Lifelong Learning in Higher Education
• Innovative methodological frameworks for the integration of AI in Higher Education
• Ethical issues on the use of AI in Higher Education
• Using ChatGPT, Generative and Open AI in teaching HE courses
• Enhanced Decision Making in Higher Education Administration with Artificial Intelligence
• Technology Literacy and adoption of AI and ChatGPT, Generative AI, OpenAI in Higher Education
• Adopting ChatGPT, Generative AI, OpenAI for designing training modules for HE Courses
• ChatGPT, Generative AI, OpenAI in Higher Education: Hype or a new pillar of developing next generation skills to students
• 25th November, 2023; Submission of Abstracts (Use the Emerald Template attached)
• 15th February, 2024, Submission of Full Chapters
• 15th March, 2024, Final chapters due (review comments incorporated)
• November 2024, Publication
• There is no charge for contributing authors
• Emerald Publishing is offering complementary ebook for all contributors
• The volume is Scopus Indexed (typically 3-5 months after publication)
• CALL FOR CHAPTERS Artificial Intelligence in Higher Educati on.pdf 143 kB
• Chapter Template EMERALD Handbook (2 ).docx 31.6 kB

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• Identify Learning Objectives: Clearly define the learning objectives and outcomes you want to achieve with the use of technology. Technology should align with the curriculum and support specific learning goals.
• Use Interactive Learning Tools: Utilize interactive learning tools such as educational apps, simulations, virtual labs, and multimedia presentations. These tools can make the learning process more engaging and hands-on for students.
• Promote Collaborative Learning: Technology can facilitate collaboration among students, allowing them to work together on projects, discussions, and group assignments. Use collaborative tools like Google Docs, online discussion forums, or video conferencing platforms to encourage teamwork and peer learning.
• Personalize Learning Experiences: Leverage adaptive learning platforms and personalized learning software to cater to individual student needs and preferences. Technology can help deliver content at the appropriate pace and level for each student.
• Gamify Learning: Incorporate gamification elements into the learning process to make it more enjoyable and motivating for students. Gamification can include points, badges, leaderboards, and challenges to reward students for their progress.
• Provide Immediate Feedback: Technology allows for quick and automated feedback, enabling students to receive immediate responses to quizzes, assessments, and assignments. Timely feedback can improve student performance and motivation.
• Facilitate Flipped Learning: Implement a flipped classroom approach where students can access content and lectures online before class. In-class time can then be used for discussions, activities, and problem-solving, maximizing student engagement.
• Promote Active Learning: Encourage active learning experiences, such as online debates, virtual field trips, and interactive simulations, to keep students actively involved in the learning process.
• Teacher Professional Development: Provide teachers with ongoing professional development to enhance their technology skills and pedagogical practices. Teachers need to feel confident and comfortable integrating technology effectively.
• Address Accessibility and Equity: Ensure that technology integration considers accessibility for all students, including those with disabilities. Additionally, address any potential disparities in access to technology outside the classroom to promote equity in learning opportunities.
• Monitor Progress and Data Analytics: Use data analytics to track student progress and identify areas for improvement. Analyzing student performance data can help educators tailor their teaching strategies to address individual learning needs.
• Balance Technology Use: While technology can enhance learning, it should not replace meaningful human interaction. Strike a balance between technology use and face-to-face interactions to create a well-rounded learning environment.
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• This study on the conditions of the educational system in Venezuela seeks to provide a diagnosis updated, complete, and technically rigorous. The diagnosis was based on a detailed questionnaire of characterization of Venezuelan schools.
• Of these, we selected 207 schools to remotely measure the level of the initial reading of 3rd graders using the EGRA test. In total, were interviewed 1,843 students and 1,936 teachers.
• The results show a significant deterioration of basic education in Venezuelan, characterized by the decrease in school enrollment as a teacher, important deficiencies in infrastructure & basic services.
• More than 40% of interviewed only read 64 words per minute (wpm) or less when they should be reading between 85-90 ppm, and consequently, they have difficulty reading fluently. In distance classes the pandemic, 47% of students have learned less, deepening the gaps between students in rural and urban areas.
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• Indicate whether you are CURRENTLY a teacher, a school leader, or an academic teacher-trainer (or more than one of these) - and then,
• Respond to the following questions (you can identify more than one response for each question, but please keep this to just a few at most. You can also add different or additional responses of your own if you prefer):
• What do you consider to be the MOST RELEVANT SOURCE OF IDEAS about teaching improvement (e.g., published research, textbooks, departmental documents, discussions with colleagues, directives from school leadership, professional development initiatives, learning about case studies, active involvement in a school improvement program, etc.)?
• What types of information do you see as providing the MOST IMPORTANT FORM OF EVIDENCE by which to determine teaching improvement success? (e.g., improved student learning outcomes, specific data about some aspect of teaching, specific data about some aspect of student learning, improved teacher/student relationships, increased student engagement, improved student classroom behaviour, increased school attendance and/or school enrollments, increased teacher confidence about their teaching, anecdotal stories about successful teaching improvement, other anecdotal information, etc.)?

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• Peer research articles
• Active and Collaborative Learning Strategies
• Adult Learners
• Survey to assess level of Student Engagement in a Community College
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• INTERACTION: Post questions or quotes around the room on chart paper and have each person answer on a sticky note (or even right on the paper), then take a gallery walk, reading and responding to each other.
• CONVERSATION: Have a "fishbowl" debate or discussion where a smaller group discusses a topic while seated in the center and the observers make notes about what they are thinking, then share and switch (have another group sit and discuss while others take notes).
• CREATIVITY: Have students draw (or sing! or dance!) responses to what they have read, rather than write.

• 16 Oct 2019
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• GamificationPsychology2019p df.pdf 1.54 MB
• GAMIFICATION_ELEMENTS_AND_THEIR_IMPAC TS.pdf 609 kB
• GamificationTrends2019p df.pdf 600 kB
• LUTResearch20 19.pdf 459 kB

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• You are expected to attend every scheduled meeting of a class.
• Any student who misses more than four classes during the semester will lose one letter on the final grade.
• Any student who  for any reason  misses 25% or more of class meetings during the course will receive an “F” in the course.
• Unexcused late arrival to class (tardy) three times will be counted as one absence.
• Except for an emergency, you are expected to remain in the classroom for the duration of the class period. If you must leave class early, inform your instructor before class.  If you fail to inform the instructor, your early departure will count as a Tardy. 

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• Zhang et.al.(2018).satisfaction with life relative to psyc ap.pdf 601 kB

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• College Student Engagement Patterns in Small Group Learning Act iv.pdf 5.28 MB

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Student engagement: What is it and why does it matter?

Teaching Insights shares staff and student voices, asking and answering questions, and showcasing examples of effective teaching and learning practices. How do our conversations and authors’ contributions align with the scholarly debate on improving student engagement?

On a warm afternoon, all working from home and with still little prospect of returning to the campus for our work, educational developers from Oxford Brookes University came together on Zoom to ‘think aloud’ about the ways they, and the teaching staff they work with, could improve student engagement. Everyone had read the contributions that form the October 2021 issue of Teaching Insights . There was a buzz as we joined the meeting and we started by discussing just how important conversation is in supporting the development of teaching practice. We noted how meaningful teaching conversations between peers are (Roxå & Mårtenssen, 2009) as an informal yet vital component of the professional development of higher education teachers. We were in agreement too with Chris Headleand (2021) whose recent blog post for The Campus discussed the need for colleagues to share their interpretations of student engagement with each other, considering how much variability there is between individual conceptions of engagement. Dismore, Turner and Huang (2018) also noted that academic staff new to teaching perceive student engagement differently from more experienced colleagues and explored new lecturers’ practices to enable engagement—more on that later.

Student engagement as contested and multi-dimensional 

Chris Headleand wasn’t the first author to point to the confusion around the meaning and use of the term student engagement. Buckley (2018) describes other writers’ and educational researchers’ concerns and concludes that student engagement is ‘enigmatic’ (p. 721). Commonly, across the higher education and compulsory education sectors, student engagement is described as multidimensional or as a meta-construct. Authors that discuss student engagement in this way write about student engagement in terms of a student’s active participation in learning activities. This, in turn, is linked to a number of things: teaching practices, well-designed curricula and learning environments, and the wider ambitions of either students or their universities for personally transformative or socially-impactful education experiences. These are the meanings that this issue’s various conversationalists and authors held of student engagement. The group recall the Alumni Reunion conversation, in which Professor Helen Walkington held a firm conception of student engagement as comprising three elements: the cognitive, emotional and professional development of a student. More commonly in the literature, the element of behavioural engagement is referenced in place of professional development engagement. Another dimension to student engagement in higher education that merits noting, even though it is not the focus of this Teaching Insights issue, relates to student participation in university decision-making, including governance, representation and co-production. Ashwin and McVitty’s (2015) article highlights how important it is to define the object in focus for any discussion of student engagement and that certainly has been the starting point—and sometimes the sticking point—across the conversations in this issue.

Student engagement is a ‘good thing’

The Recipes for Success , which are examples of practical activities that have proven effective in specific learning and teaching contexts, have all been focused not simply on defining student engagement but on improving it. Engagement is assumed to be a ‘good thing’—something to cultivate and support. Zepke, Leach and Butler (2014) noted that lecturers in their study tended to see engagement as the responsibility primarily of the student. What is clear from the wider literature and experiences from our Teaching Insights contributors is that there are many ways teaching staff influence engagement. If, as we posit, student engagement is a ‘good thing’, then teaching staff and educational developers should rightfully play an active role to enable student engagement. In the context of student engagement as the formation of understanding and the development and transformation of knowledge [to broadly follow Ashwin and McVitty’s (2015) distinctive interpretation], our conversation turned to the ways teaching staff can improve student engagement.

From knowing students to watching for student engagement

The group saw improving student engagement as ideally starting from a point of knowing our students individually. From here, educators can then align their teaching approaches, learning activities and curriculum to best support students. Our conversationalists clearly saw the personalised support that educators give students as among the most valuable of ways to improve student engagement. However, in a mass higher education system with staff-student ratios closely managed, knowing all our students individually is tricky. We talked about the increasing potential of course learning analytics for informing and strengthening individual staff-student relationships, for instance as behavioural engagement might be knowable from patterns that emerge across monitored student actions such as downloading readings and attendance. We also recognised that promoting active learning approaches during course contact hours was critical. Educators can watch students’ cognitive and emotional engagement, and use that as real-time feedback on student learning. 

A salient outcome of teaching during the pandemic has been the consideration of the ways we can measure (or watch) more dimensions of student engagement in online spaces with the intention of taking proactive actions to improve it [see, for example, Brown et al.’s (2020) conceptual framework to enhance online learning and engagement]. ‘Teaching into the void’—that is, teaching students who have their cameras off during online classes—has been repeatedly described as problematic for teaching staff because it severs an important feedback loop where proxies or approximations of some dimensions of student engagement are knowable (or watchable). We note the suggestions on how to encourage students to turn their cameras on shared by the staff and student panellists in this issue’s Peer Review .

Once student engagement in learning can be known and seen, teaching staff can react and align their teaching practice and learning resources to best support engagement and play their part to enable student engagement. However, some teaching staff, particularly those new in role, might struggle to enable student engagement. Dismore, Turner and Huang (2018) noted that incorporating (inter)active learning approaches into classes to promote student engagement required risk-taking and confidence on the part of the educator—even more so with perceived barriers such as group size and content.

Structuring engaging learning

It is clear that to encourage student engagement, there is an important role for teaching staff to create learning environments that are purposeful, active and interactive. Aspects of behavioural, emotional and cognitive engagement can be observed, and actions taken to improve these facets of engagement. It would be useful to consider student engagement in terms of the relationships at the core of higher education learning. These include the relationships between:

• staff and students;
• students and their peers;
• students and the discipline or subject; and
• students and their own ontological development.

Teaching staff and the ways they structure learning (whether online or in-person) play a critical role in orchestrating these relationships, for instance in defining how peers collaborate and support one another to learn, in setting how the curriculum delivery reveals disciplinary and professional skills and insights, and in allowing time and space for students to reflect on how their personal and professional development has grown during their studies.

So far, our conversation has explored the ways in which educators can enable student engagement. We talked about the importance of getting to know students individually and being able to observe student engagement behaviours. In an era of mass (and online) higher education, course learning analytics and active learning activities during class contact hours can be used strategically to obtain feedback on how students are engaging and learning. When structuring engaging learning experiences, educators can usefully consider the key relationships in higher education learning as outlined above (e.g. between students and their peers, students and their own ontological development, etc.). Of course, our conversation has been predicated on the assumption that student engagement is a ‘good thing’ and that educators have a part to play in enabling engaging learning. This would be particularly so if we assume, as seems often to be the case, that student engagement is linked to students fulfilling their potential and achieving their goals. But is there evidence of that? Is there published evidence where quantified measures of student engagement have been related to student outcomes and achievements? 

The relationship between student engagement, student outcomes and well-being

Despite the amount of research and practice-led speculation on the relationship between student engagement and teaching practices, we were not aware of much data that could demonstrate causality between student engagement and individual student outcomes in higher education. The book Engaging University Students by Coates and McCormick (2014) showcases global endeavour in different countries to measure student engagement, largely through large-scale surveys. Beyond higher education, there is evidence of links between aspects of behavioural and emotional student engagement, and academic achievement [see for example, Finn and Zimmer (2012)]. In higher education settings, a few papers exist that do demonstrate the impacts of (mostly) small-scale, micro-changes to teaching practices on closely related achievement measures. There is also plenty of discussion about what outcomes or success measures might be used. One large-scale study by Pascarella, Seifert and Blaich (2010) across 13 higher education colleges in the USA concluded that there was a correlation between students’ effective learning practices (e.g. preparing for classes, reading and writing, working with peers, interacting with teaching staff) and a number of important educational outcomes linked to liberal educational intentions, including moral character and well-being. We think the link between engagement and well-being is particularly interesting. More recent work by Boulton et al. (2019) has also indicated that student engagement and well-being may be related and they have suggested a ‘possible feedback loop where increasing engagement increases academic performance, which in turn increases well-being’ (p. 14). Macfarlane and Tomlinson (2017) have criticised the overt focus on student engagement and performance, and the search for causal relationships. 

We conclude by noting the virtue of teaching staff, educational developers and university managers looking for ways to develop student engagement. We also suggest that there is much merit in clearly defining and sharing their definitions of student engagement, for example, as students’ active commitment and effort spent on learning activities. With clear definitions in use, we can take action (and monitor the impacts of these actions) to build learning experiences that improve student engagement and support student well-being. Such approaches would seek to link student engagement to a compassionate, principled pedagogy that can support higher education students to flourish, irrespective of their motivations, aspirations, desired outcomes or definitions of success.

Ashwin, P., & McVitty, D. (2015). The meanings of student engagement: Implications for policies and practices. In A. Curaj, L. Matei, R. Pricopie, J. Salmi, & P. Scott (Eds.), The European higher education area: Between critical reflections and future policies . Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20877-0_23

Boulton, C. A., Hughes, E., Kent, C., Smith, J. R., & Williams, H. T. P. (2019). Student engagement and wellbeing over time at a higher education institution. PLoS ONE, 14 (11), e0225770. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0225770  

Brown, A., Lawrence, J., Basson M., & Redmond, P. (2020). A conceptual framework to enhance student online learning and engagement in higher education. Higher Education Research & Development . https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2020.1860912

Buckley, A. (2018). The ideology of student engagement research. Teaching in Higher Education, 23 (6), 718–732. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2017.1414789  

Coates, H., & McCormick, A.C. (2014). Engaging university students: International insights from system-wide studies . Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4585-63-7  

Dismore, H., Turner, R., & Huang, R. (2018). Let me edutain you! Practices of student engagement employed by new lecturers. Higher Education Research & Development, 38 (2), 235–249. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2018.1532984    

Finn, J. D., & Zimmer, K. S. (2012). Student engagement: What is it? Why does it matter?. In S. Christenson, A. Reschly, & C. Wylie (Eds.), Handbook of research on student engagement (pp. 97–131). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-2018-7_5

Headleand, C. (2021) What does student engagement mean to you? And you? And you? . The Campus. Retrieved 3 September 2021, from https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/what-does-student-engagement-mean-you-and-you-and-you

Macfarlane, B., & Tomlinson, M. (2017). Critiques of student engagement. Higher Education Policy, 30 , 5–21. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41307-016-0027-3

Pascarella, E. T ., Seifert, T. A ., & Blaich, C. (2010). How effective are the NSSE benchmarks in predicting important educational outcomes? Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 42 (1), 16–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/00091380903449060  

Roxå, T., & Mårtenssen, A. (2009). Significant conversations and significant networks – exploring the backstage of the teaching arena. Studies in Higher Education, 34 (5), 547–559. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070802597200  

Zepke, N., Leach, L., & Butler, P. (2014). Student engagement: Students’ and teachers’ perceptions. Higher Education Research & Development, 33 (2), 386–398. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2013.832160  

Acknowledgements

Written by Jackie Potter, Mary Kitchener, Kat Kwok, Elizabeth Lovegrove and Cathy Malone.

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