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of Contents

Engagement of Students in Learning......

Designs for Engaged Learning......

Appendix A: References......

Appendix B: Flow......

Appendix C: Range of Technology Use......

Engagement of Students in Learning

By Metiri Group

“Schools cannot be made great by great teacher performances. They will only be made great by great student performances.”

- Phil Schlechty (2002)

Universally, the mission of schools is to ensure that students acquire the skills, knowledge, processes, and dispositions that enable them to thrive in today’s global, high tech society and workplace. Today that means much more than academic excellence. 21st Century graduates must be critical thinkers, collaborative team players, culturally sensitive, visually perceptive, technologically adept, and curious and creative livelong learners (Partnership for 21st Century Learning).

The Partnership for 21st Century Learning linked education to economic viability in its recent 2008 publication on competitiveness quoting the Economic and Social Research Council, ““Economic success is increasingly based on the effective utilization of intangible assets, such as knowledge, skills, and innovative potential as the key resource for competitive advantage.”

It is well recognized that students won’t excel in those areas unless they are routinely actively and intrinsically engaged in deep learning. Yet increasing numbers of students are disenfranchised from schooling, and significant numbers are dropping out before completing high school. In the U.S., the drop out rate was 9.3 % in 2006, with that of minorities much higher at 10.7% and 22.1% for black and Hispanic students respectively (NCES 2008) of those students who enter the 9th grade do not go on to graduate. According to Statistics Canada, drop out rates for 20- to 24-year-olds have declined from 16.6% in 1990 to 9.3% in 2006. While the average dropout rate that that age group from 2004-05 to 2006-07 was 9.4 for Canada overall, the numbers were slightly higher for Alberta at 11.2%. Furthermore, within that time period in Alberta, the percentages for large cities, small towns and rural areas were 9.8%, 18.3% and 20.0% respectively, with numbers higher for males than females (Statistics Canada, 2007).

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills also reported that, “Countries that do well on PISA have higher increases in GDP growth than countries that do not…A highly skilled work force can raise economic growth by about two-thirds of a percentage point every year…Higher levels of cognitive skill appear to play a major role in explaining international differences in economic growth.”

With the link between economic viability and education made clear, it is not surprising that increased attention is being paid to student engagement in learning. Students must not only stay in school, they must become deeply engaged in learning in order to acquire the 21st Century skills they will need to contribute as citizens, family members, and workers in a knowledge-based, global economy.

Student Engagement

For the purposes of this work, student engagement is defined as, “the degree to which students are actively pursuing deep learning related to established standards,” (Fredricks, J.A., Blumenfeld, P.C., & Paris, A. H., 2004). Deep learning is defined as, “learning that involves the critical analysis of new ideas, linking them to already known concepts and principles, and leads to understanding and long-term retention of concepts so that they can be used for problem solving in unfamiliar contexts,” (United Kingdom Higher Education Academy).

Experts in this field further describe engagement as a combination of cognitive, behavioral, and emotional engagement (Fredricks et al., 2004). While most schools focus on intellectual or cognitive aspects of the students’ school experiences, lesser attention to date has been paid to the socio-emotional and behavioral aspects – except to address negative aspects of the latter when they interfere with classroom and school functions. Emergent research in the field indicates the interplay between the three aspects of student engagement and especially, the contributions of socio-emotional engagement of students to their cognitive development in schools.

Flow

Just above the flow diagnonal, when challenge exceeds expertise by a small margin results in creativity. Just below the flow diagnonal, when skill exceeds the level of the challenge by a small margin offers opportunity for students to build automaticity through practice.

In attempting to achieve flow experiences for students the following aspects of engagement should be considered.

Cognitive or Intellectual Engagement (Investments)

The Partnership for 21st Century learning suggests that, “Cognitive skills are significantly more important in determining economic outcomes than a traditional measure of educational success: school attainment.” The studies by Stanford (Hanushek, 2005) cited in the P21 report on competitiveness (2008) found that, “Increasing the average number of years of schooling attained by the labor force boosts the economy only when increased levels of school attainment also boost cognitive skills. In other words, it is not enough simply to spend more time in school; something has to be learned there.”

Cognitive engagement has been addressed in the literature as an investment of effort and self-regulation by the individual focused on deep, intellectual learning of the academics and intellectual development, as evidenced by motivation, attitude, commitment, and self-regulation. It can be summed up as “thoughtfulness and willingness to exert the effort necessary to comprehend complex ideas and master difficult skills,” (Fredricks et. al., 2004).

One of the key influences on cognitive engagement is the attribution belief on the part of the student. That is, does the student attribute their progress (or lack thereof) to ability or effort? Motivation and commitment are greatly influenced by such beliefs. Students who attribute their progress to effort are much more likely to succeed since they feel that they have control over the amount of effort committed to learning.

Socio-Emotional Engagement (Interactions/reactions)

By design, schools are social places for engaging students in learning. Socio-emotional engagement refers to students’ affective reactions in and to schooling. It may be registered as interest, boredom, anxiety, happiness, etc, but is generally thought to be a measure of the identification or belonging the student associates with schooling.

Students typically do not learn alone. Rather, they work under the guidance of teachers, in the company of peers, and with the support of family and community. While the socio-emotional engagement of students is often addressed largely for the purposes of health, safety, and/or citizenship, the research is clear that it does directly influence intellectual progress. In fact, prosocial conduct and relationships are predictive of higher academic performance, with the converse true for antisocial conduct (Zins, J.E., Weissberg, R., Wang, M, & Walberg, H., 2004).

A review of school programs that address social and/or emotional growth in students are often very fragmented, targeting particular maladaptive behaviors (e.g., promote health, prevent violence and delinquency, prevent dropping out, decrease teen pregnancy, etc.). However, few such programs adequately address general reactions to teachers, classmates, academics and schools -- all of which are important in creating positive ties to the school and positive influences to the school work.

Johnson and Johnson (2003), researchers on cooperative learning, report that collaborative learning results consistently in increased learning in comparison to competition and individual work. Social-emotional competencies such as self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, relationship skills, and responsible decision making influence behavior, relationships with teachers, peers, and school are all important aspects of social-emotional intelligence.

Behavioral Engagement (Participation)

Behavioral engagement focuses on participation. It is evidenced by the student’s following of school rules, in class participation (e.g., academic and social), and extracurricular participation. That participation often involves such behaviors as effort, persistence, concentration, attention, asking questions, and contributing in class.

Behavior is influenced by both cognitive engagement and socio-emotional engagement. Academic success often results in increased attendance, fuller class participation, increased effort – success breeds success. On the other hand, repeated academic failure often results in decreases in school participation. Similarly, prosocial or antisocial engagement has the expected results.

Levels of Student Engagement

The Metiri Group developed a Student Engagement survey that includes five engagement levels (Schlechty 2002; Fredricks et al 2004):

• Intrinsically Engaged
• Tactically Engaged
• Compliant
• Withdrawn
• Defiant

The types of engagement are defined in more detail below, followed by a graph of the percentage of students in each level for Alberta’s Emerge program in Year 1.

Characteristics: Intrinsically Engaged Learners

• Student sees the activity as personally meaningful.
• The student's level of interest is sufficiently high that he persists in the face of difficulty.
• The student finds the task sufficiently challenging that he believes he will accomplish something of worth by doing it.
• The student's emphasis is on optimum performance and on "getting it right."

Characteristics: Tactically Engaged Learners

• The official reason for the work is not the reason the student does the work, she substitutes her own goals for the goals of the work.
• The substituted goals are instrumental -grades, class rank, college acceptance, and parental approval.
• The focus is on what it takes to get the desired personal outcome rather than on the nature of the task itself-satisfactions are extrinsic.
• If the task doesn’t promise to meet the extrinsic goal, the student will abandon it.

Characteristics: Compliant Students

• The work has no meaning to the student and is not connected to what does have meaning.
• There are no substitute goals for the student.
• The student seeks to avoid either confrontation or approbation.
• The emphasis is on minimums and exit requirements: “What do I have to do to get this over and get out?”

Characteristics: Withdrawn Students

• The student is disengaged from current classroom activities and goals. The student is thinking about other things or is emotionally withdrawn from the action.
• The student rejects both the official goals and the official means of achieving the goals.
• The student feels unable to do what is being asked, or is uncertain about what is being asked.

Characteristics: Defiant

• The student is disengaged from current classroom activities and goals.
• The student is actively engaged in another agenda.
• The student creates her own means and her own goals.
• The student’s rebellion is usually seen in acting out-and often in encouraging others to rebel.

It is clear that cognitive, socio-emotional, and behavioral engagements are interdependent. Schools that focus only on cognitive/intellectual achievement neglect aspects of student engagement are doomed to fail a percentage of their students.

Provincial results from Year 1 (Elementary N=962; Secondary N=787)

Tips and Techniques

The following 10 tips and techniques represent emergent research findings:

1. Tap into student interests and prior knowledge related to content to be studied. Establish learning tasks in ways that help students see the relevance and meaning of what they are studying in relationship to their lives, family and communities.
2. Encourage students to set learning goals specific to the areas of study/content; discourage extrinsic goal setting. Provide students with choice as to how they attain these goals.
3. Provide feedback to students as to the level and quality of effort expended in making progress toward the learning goals, not on their ability levels or the speed with which they completed the work.

1. Model the process of inquiry and deep learning, and/or provide worked examples for examination, so students will have exemplars from which to work.
2. Assign products that require students to demonstrate their learning, where possible in authentic ways. Be clear and concise as to standards by which the student work will be assessed.

Classroom Observational Rubrics on Student Engagement

The next section in this paper addresses the learning designs in schools that promote the three types of engagement.