Student Engagement: A Primer
According to the 2015 Gallup Student Poll, the percentage of students engaged in school decreases nearly every year, suggesting that students become less engaged the longer they are in school. High school drop-out rates are thought to be correlated with student disengagement, which is probably why in the last decade, student engagement has resurfaced in literature and among instructional objectives under so many aliases that we have a hard time keeping track of what, exactly, the difference is between active engagement and hands-on activities, or between hands-on and minds-on engagement.
Engagement’s buzzword status has served only to obscure what educators are talking about. What exactly is engagement? Most importantly, how do we nurture it in our classrooms?
What constitutes engagement?
The Glossary of Education Reform defines student engagement as:
“the degree of attention, curiosity, interest, optimism, and passion that students show when they are learning or being taught, which extends to the level of motivation they have to learn and progress in their education.
In recent decades, as educators consider learning in the context of “non-cognitive learning skills” and cognitive learning results, student engagement is discussed through various lenses: intellectual engagement, emotional engagement, behavioral engagement, physical engagement, social engagement, and cultural engagement, skills engagement, participation engagement, emotional engagement, and performance engagement.
Why do students become disengaged?
We don’t believe that any student is inherently lazy or disengaged. Students can become disengaged for a wide variety of reasons, but motivation issues, whether intrinsic or extrinsic can be addressed by creating a classroom environment that follows the best practices for creating an engaged classroom. Among them: keep expectations high but within reach, challenge students to draw on their strengths, and give meaningful feedback in a timely manner.
How do we measure engagement?
Arguably, the simplest and most prevalent method of indirectly measuring engagement is through standardized tests. Studies have not yet reached a consensus on the strength of the correlation between academic performance and behavioral engagement. One possible explanation for the variance across studies is the type of assessment administered. Tests that assess memory are more likely to show a positive correlation between academic performance and behavioral engagement. In contrast, for tests that require critical thinking or problem-solving skills, behavioral engagement may not be an accurate predictor of academic success.
If engagement and academic performance are not necessarily correlated, then how can educators measure how engaged their classroom is? There are many proposed solutions, but the problem with nearly all of the suggestions for re-engaging students is that they postulate a level of resources that are not available to most educators. Student re-engagement is based on a highly individualized learning strategy that most schools and teachers simply don’t have the infrastructure to support.
Rather than fundamentally redefining the U.S. education system, Polyup and other emerging education technologies are creating personalized learning experiences that don’t overtax teachers, while still scaling to accommodate large classes and the diverse needs within them.
How to foster engagement in the classroom?
Students are shown to be more engaged in class when they feel that they have control over the learning process. We see the future of the classroom as one in which teachers relinquish control over how well students learn and refocus their attention on how well students engage.
Student engagement is shown to be closely correlated with their teachers’ level of engagement. Reviving existing curriculum with new technologies can indirectly increase student interest and motivation by re-engaging educators.
We need to stop putting the onus on students to fit themselves into their school environment and ask instead how we can meet the needs of the students. Unsurprisingly, the students that suffer the most from a lack of individualized attention belong primarily to rural and under-served communities.
The case for technology in the classroom
A roomful of students with electronic devices in-hand is hardly what teachers picture when imagining engaged learners. We’re biased, but we think that the benefits of a hybrid flipped/traditional classroom model far outweigh the costs. Real-time assessment and individualized learning plans that adapt to students’ pace are only some of the many benefits of engaging students online.
Why teachers are choosing Polyup to engage their students
At Polyup, engagement is a fundamental part of our mission. In Leaving to Learn: How Out-of-School Learning Increases Student Engagement and Reduces Dropout Rates (Heinemann, 2013), the authors argue:
traditional school structures, cultures, programs, curricula, and instructional practices can’t adequately respond to student expectations unless schools develop opportunities for all students to do some learning outside of school. To accomplish this, schools must take down the walls that separate learning that students do inside the school from outside of it.
But while the authors are looking fundamentally redesign the U.S. education, we believe that it is possible to retool the system, which is why learning outside of the classroom is critical to our platform. Our partnership with AVID is just one example of our commitment to bridging equity issues, which are fundamentally tied to drop-out rates in high schools.
Follow us on social media to keep up with our journey and #jointhemovement.
