So What Is Student Engagement Anyway?

Student engagement. Honestly I feel like I have heard those words so many times that I have a serious urge to launch a projectile at the next person who utters them. “What are you doing to engage your students,” has become more accusation than discussion starter, and frankly, the phrase is so overused that I think many people don’t even really know what it means anymore. Over time student engagement has evolved to mean something closer to, “How are you entertaining your students?” And we all know we enter dangerous waters when our goal as educator’s shifts from learning centered lessons to activity based lessons.

So I propose that before we determine how we are engaging our students, we actually redefine student engagement, and what exactly it means for our classrooms. The basic definition of engage includes “to attract and hold by influence and power” and “to hold the attention of and induce to participate.”

 

To engage students goes much deeper than to merely entertain them. Sure, if you are a naturally compelling individual, you might more easily grab students’ attention, but that doesn’t mean you can get them to participate. Engagement requires real action on the part of the student. It means that their mind is scrutinizing and analyzing, and not just processing. Various educators and researchers have puzzled over the magical formula that will fully classify how and why some students engage so easily and some do not.

 

Joke + Candy + Occasional Threat = Engagement?

 

Heidi Olinger believes that student engagement is intricately linked to the things students hold most dear. She says, “I have learned this: discovering and appealing to what students value has the power of a ‘return on investment’ of their eagerly engaging in and owning their learning. And that is the pedagogical gold ring.” It is an investment because there are as many values as there are students, and not all children are amenable to coughing up this very personal information. Lori Desautels refers to these efforts of creating connections as ensuring that the students are “feeling felt” and enter into a sense of belonging. But, we seem to be moving towards classroom culture here… back to engagement!

 

Richard Strong, Harvey F. Silver and Amy Robinson assert that student engagement is a convergence of four goals: success, curiosity, originality, and relationships. I find this to be an intriguing argument mainly because it allows me to quantify something that seems a little too theoretical at times. Could it be as simple as igniting and giving voice to these four goals?

The danger with characterizing what engagement looks like is that it assumes we know it when we see it. I would like to think that I am fully aware of the engagement level in a classroom, but in truth, there are those kids that are so compliant that they are masquerading as engaged learners. These completer-kids (who do exactly what they are told, when they are told, how they are told) are often the ones that we reach the least because they don’t cause a stink. So how do we separate legitimate, earnest, and classroom altering engagement from a bunch of well programmed robots?

 

And this brings us back to the original problem of accurately defining the dratted – but incredibly vital – phrase to begin with. So I pose the question to you: what is student engagement?

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/appeal-to-what-students-value-heidi-olinger

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/the-key-of-connection-lori-desautels

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept95/vol53/num01/Strengthening-Student-Engagement@-What-Do-Students-Want.aspx