Engagement

Engagement means students directing their attention and energy ‘in the moment’ towards a particular task or activity. It describes the observable student behaviours, such as planning, task management, and persistence, that arise from their feelings of motivation.

Engagement with learning is essential to academic progress. It is most likely to occur when students are motivated, interested, and socially interactive. It is also most often associated with other characteristics in students, such as self-regulation or self-directedness, conscientiousness, and drive. Student outcomes are affected by the extent to which they exert effort, demonstrate enthusiasm, think strategically, and constructively contribute to learning plans.

There is a considerable body of evidence on engagement in education, including quantitative evidence determining the link between student engagement and learning. The evidence base is complicated as engagement is a multi-faceted concept, which is not only connected to a number of other aspects of students and learning but also impacted by context.

High levels of engagement are supported by:

• Students’ interest in a task or in a particular subject
• Meaningful, authentic, challenging (yet achievable) tasks
• A classroom context where individual students’ needs are catered for
• Providing opportunities to learn using a variety of techniques
• Actively involving students in the teaching and learning process
• Providing feedback that focuses on comprehension, mastery, and strategies, rather than feedback which defines competence in comparison to class performance

Providing opportunities for groupwork in which students can work with their peers

• How do you create conditions in your classroom to promote high levels of engagement?
• How do you ensure that students who are highly engaged in a task are actually learning what you are intending for them to learn?
• How do you respond when you recognise that students in your class have disengaged?