While engagement was long thought of as simply showing up to class and listening intently, a new study coauthored by a University of Pittsburgh researcher looks at student engagement through a new lens.
Looking beyond completed assignments and attendance, this research looks at other measures of student engagement, including a student's emotional and cognitive involvement with course material, to tell a different story.
“When we talk about student engagement, we tend to talk only about student behavior,” Ming-Te Wang, assistant professor of psychology in education in the School of Education and of psychology in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences at Pitt, said in a statement. “But my coauthor and I feel like that doesn’t tell us the whole story. Emotion and cognition are also very important.”
Coauthored by Jacquelynne S. Eccles of the University of Michigan, the researchers have put together the first pieces of empirical research that link a student's perceptions of the school environment with behavior.
The results suggest that student engagement is malleable, and can be improved by promoting a positive school environment. The researchers say this could pave the way future work to offer educators a diagnostic tool for recognizing disengagement as well as strategies for improvement.
“Enhancing student engagement has been identified as the key to addressing problems of low achievement, high levels of student misbehavior, alienation, and high dropout rates,” Wang said.
According to the authors, students who felt that the subject matter being taught and the activities provided by their teachers were meaningful and related to their goals were more emotionally and cognitively engaged than were their peers.
Wang is working with six Allegheny County school districts to focus on developing a diagnostic tool that teachers can use to identify students who are disengaged from school, with a specific emphasis on math and science classes.