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CHAPTER 1

STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

Teacher instruction either inspires or dulls engagement. The launching (contexts) and consolidating (situations) that you create influence students more than any other aspect of their education (Parsons et al., 2014). Other elements can inspire students, but your teaching practices are at the center of a student’s desire to learn in your classroom. Sadly, educators often focus improvement initiatives on changing students, not changing their own practices. I, too, have been guilty of this. All the research in this book (including Dweck, 2006; Fisher & Frey, 2015; Muhammad, 2018; Ryan & Deci, 2000a, 2000b) tells us that educators are the ones who need to adjust. It also tells us that when we do adjust and use the most effective strategies, our students are more likely to succeed (Hattie, 2012).

How should educators and other stakeholders define engagement? What is its significance? How can they measure it? What are its elements? How can educators and stakeholders implement those elements? We’ll answer these questions in this chapter.

Definition

Because I reveal what the motivations are for each mindset, let me distinguish between the two concepts. Although some use these terms interchangeably, motivation is not equivalent to engagement. Motivation prompts us to act; it’s the driving force behind what we educators do. Ryan and Deci (2000a) distinguish between two main types—(1) intrinsic and (2) extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation means “doing something because it is inherently interesting or enjoyable” and extrinsic motivation means “doing something because it leads to a separable outcome” (Ryan & Deci, 2000a, p. 55). Motivation that’s intrinsic comes from within; extrinsic comes from elsewhere, and the most common in traditional classrooms are rewards (a free homework pass, for example) and punishments (a docked grade for incomplete homework).

Engagement is bigger than that. It blends positive motivation with academics, feelings about school, and self-regulating behaviors. It may help to think of the relationship like this: engagement is the destination, instruction is the car, and motivation is the gasoline.

If asked about engagement, most teachers would identify elements of student behavior like raising hands, attending class, or completing homework. When a student is disengaged, it may be easy to identify behaviors such as sleeping, doing other work, or even disrupting as disengagement. In my experience, when teachers talk about engagement, we identify behavior first because it’s observable. As researchers and education consultants Adena M. Klem and James P. Connell (2004) spell out, “Regardless of the definition, research links higher levels of engagement in school with improved performance” (page 3). That bare-bones breakdown implies how significant engagement is.

Significance

Student engagement is a valuable tool for predicting academic performance. In fact, it is a “robust predictor of student learning, grades, achievement, test scores, retention, and graduation” (Skinner & Pitzer, 2012, p. 21), as student disengagement can lead to dropping out. Increasing student engagement helps educators to change the school, district, community, and, most important, a student’s life. To help elaborate on this point, I need to share a personal story.

I was a Detroit kid. Living three doors down from me was my best friend for most of my childhood, Joshua. We spent every day together for most of our young lives. Joshua and I both attended public school until ninth grade. At that point, we began attending different schools. I knew Joshua was a brilliant, intellectual guy—he was an avid science, fantasy, historical fiction, and comic book reader and had deep passions for the arts, including anime (long before it was popular in the U.S.) and all kinds of music from all over the world. He excelled at social studies and science. Beyond that, he was a kind and moral person; he was the voice of reason when we were heading toward neighborhood trouble.

Joshua dropped out of high school at sixteen. Students who drop out are less likely to find jobs, less likely to earn a living wage, more likely to live in poverty, and more likely to suffer from a variety of adverse health outcomes (Rumberger, 2011). They’re also more likely to commit crimes (Levin, Belfield, Muennig, & Rouse, 2007).

Joshua experienced many of the life events the statistics say a dropout has. He had a daughter when he was still getting his life together. I have thought about his daughter, whom he named after me and who is my goddaughter, and how life has also stacked the deck against her. According to professors Clive R. Belfield, Henry M. Levin, and Rachel Rosen (2012), and Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy (2008), children born to parents who didn’t complete high school are more likely to drop out, too. Despite those statistics, I do have good news, which I’ll share at the end of the book (page 93).

While reflecting on his education, Joshua doesn’t mince words:

My teachers would let the good students do nothing. I was polite and thoughtful; they never pushed me for work or to think. As long as I was quiet, I was doing my job. After a time, I could just stay home and get the same thing done (J. Smith, personal communication, August 16, 2018).

How does a student wind up on this path? Later in the book, I’ll introduce you to one of the student engagement mindsets that Joshua represents—the retreater (page 37). This is why you and I are here: to make sure students like my best friend don’t get left behind.

Elements

Engagement is essential to your students’ success. Teachers are empowered when they understand the following engagement models and can leverage those elements to influence greater engagement in their classrooms and schools.

I include two plentiful, interconnected engagement elements.

1. Cognitive, affective, and behavioral model:

♦ Cognitive

♦ Affective

♦ Behavioral

2. Self-determination theory:

♦ Autonomy

♦ Competence

♦ Relatedness

Those interconnections center on thinking, emotions, and independence, all of which lead to students’ choices about whether to engage in school.

Student Engagement Trifecta: Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral

Engagement appears in three dimensions: (1) affective (feelings), (2) behavioral, and (3) cognitive (adapted from Fredricks, Blumenfeld, & Paris, 2004; Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000; Parsons et al., 2014). Figure 1.1 (page 14) is a graphic representation of this concept, showing how the dimensions relate.

Source: Adapted from Appleton et al., 2008; Parsons et al., 2014.

Figure 1.1: Student engagement model.

The first two elements of the student engagement model—cognitive and affective—are symbiotic. They either strengthen or dissolve in unison. The behavioral dimension relies on those two.

Cognitive

Cognition initiates engagement. This is the student’s structure, interaction level, and thinking. Imagine a classroom without a teacher. This classroom would lack any cognitive engagement with learning. Now imagine a classroom with a teacher who only lectures. Those students would have varied cognitive engagement levels. Some students would listen and think, while others would not. Finally, imagine a classroom where the teacher structures the learning in multiple levels of listening, including collaboration with teacher and peers. It also would include independent thinking, critical thinking, talking, game playing, and other instructional frameworks. That teacher would maximize the possibility of cognitive engagement.

Cognitive engagement is also the student’s willingness to try to understand the content (Rimm-Kaufman, Baroody, Larsen, Curby, & Abry, 2015). Going back to the lecture example, some students would make an effort to listen and learn, while others would zone out. Additionally, the classroom that had mixed methods would have increased student willingness and higher learning levels (Grant, Lapp, Fisher, Johnson, & Frey, 2012; Young, 2017). The star in figure 1.1 makes it clear that, because educators control the learning methods and structures, cognition is the most important element. In most traditional classrooms, we determine what content we expose a student to and how we present it. Teachers don’t directly control how students feel about the school, but the cognitive experiences they offer culminate in students’ feelings about school. Students work harder, enjoy learning, and share ideas more freely in classes when the teacher shows warmth, caring, and individual responsiveness (Rimm-Kaufman et al., 2015).

Affective

The affective dimension is how a student feels about school and how connected he or she feels to the school and classroom. Students need positive relationships to the school at large, as well as to their teachers (as explained earlier), the content (see Self-Determination Theory: Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness, page 16), and each other (Brown & Larson, 2009), and these relationships are intertwined. Belonging is such an important need that loneliness can compromise cognition (Cacioppo & Hawkley, 2009). A positive relationship to academics doesn’t ordinarily follow social struggles. Education professor Deborah Schussler (2009) states, “Students who do not feel that they belong on the football field or in the student council also feel that they do not belong in the classroom” (p. 117).

Behavioral

Student behavior, positive and negative, is a manifestation of the cognitive and affective dimensions. When students experience sustained issues in cognitive or affective engagement, they are far more likely to develop issues in behavior (Cairns & Cairns, 1994; Estell, Farmer, & Cairns, 2007, as cited in Farmer et al., 2011). A student may have routinely disengaged in another class led by other teachers, but if you can structure the classroom to hook their interest with fun methods—all the while building a positive relationship—that student will engage. Have you ever wondered why the same teachers, year in and year out, produce high levels of learning? In my experience, these teachers operate the way I just described.

Focusing on student behavior to improve student engagement is akin to treating the pain for an earache—you’re treating a symptom, not the cause. It’s the easiest way to gauge engagement because it is observable. You increase feelings of connection when you launch and consolidate learning—with its systems thinking focus on relationships, communication, responsiveness, and sustainability. Those feelings can help students connect even further with the lessons you provide. The cognitive and affective dimensions work together to help students self-regulate, which improves behavior. This creates an upward spiral of positive classroom experiences where success reinforces success. Behavior is evidence of what the cognitive and affective components produce between them.

A concept outlined in Ryan and Deci’s (2009) self-determination theory can help underscore this phenomenon, where good instruction increases affect toward school and changes student behavior.

Self-Determination Theory: Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness

We have needs: to feel involved in something that matters to us, to feel capable, and to belong. For example, when I was a teacher, I felt compelled to have next week’s lesson plans done the Friday before I left school; I wanted to feel involved in something that matters to me. When you write a paper for your doctoral-level class, you put in the effort and do not expect negative feedback; you want to feel capable. And losing a friend is hard; you want to belong. SDT, simplified here for ease, explains these desires. SDT states that all humans seek three things: (1) autonomy, (2) competence, and (3) relatedness, whose interrelatedness appears in figure 1.2. That applies in the classroom too.

Source: Adapted from Ryan & Deci, 2009.

Figure 1.2: Venn diagram for autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

And so, if launching learning is about creating a positive environment (and beginning to build positive relatedness toward the content), consolidating learning is about building a situation for students that allows autonomy and competence all students need before they can engage. There are also relatedness elements to any consolidating lesson, because this should also be a highly collaborative structure.

Collaborative structures do build relatedness, but they also support both the autonomy of a lesson and give necessary supports for students to gain competence. They are very important. In this book, I try to include these elements to engage you as readers. You’ll see those efforts in the presence of multiple strategy choices—you have the autonomy to choose which appeal to you. You will feel competent when I highlight a strategy that you know is a strength in your classroom or when you recognize a student engagement mindset and have antidotes of your own that work with them. I also share personal anecdotes and direct questions to establish a positive relationship between us.

The following sections discuss autonomy, competence, and relatedness in turn. In later chapters, as you read about the student engagement mindsets, I’ll describe a specific recipe of autonomy, competence, and relatedness that each mindset needs most.

Autonomy

Essentially, we all want control over what we do and where we go. That is autonomy. Our brains are hardwired to achieve this (Deci & Ryan, 2014). Every person experiences this feeling. Parents may easily see this in their child’s stages, from toddlerhood to teenagehood—insisting on dressing oneself despite a long process and resulting eclectic ensemble, to audibly resisting a curfew.

As young people, students crave this same independence. However, much of the traditional education process is scripted. The teacher has roles. The students have roles. Flipping that approach to allow students to take the teacher role can help increase autonomy. I know a mathematics interventionist who does this. Her students come with identified skill gaps, and usually they have been sitting quietly during that topic. They appear withdrawn and disengaged. When they work with the interventionist who, during small-group lessons, has students lead games with each other, the interventionist reports that the students love it and do not consider it a burden (T. Remington, personal communication, August 16, 2018).

How do teachers in your school allow autonomy? Do you consult with students to see what topics interest them most and how they want to learn about them? In Better Learning Through Structured Teaching, Fisher and Frey (2008) guide educators to student autonomy: a gradual release of responsibility. See table 1.1.

Table 1.1: Gradual Release of Responsibility

Teacher Responsibility	Student Responsibility
Explicit instruction	“I do it.”
Guided instruction	“We do it.”
Collaboration	“You do it together.”
Independence	“You do it alone.”

Source: Fisher & Frey, 2008.

This is the type of instruction that should occur in every classroom every day. The gradual release of responsibility gives a student the structured autonomy for his or her own learning. Student responsibility for learning increases as teacher responsibility for instruction decreases. A teacher assumes the most responsibility when giving explicit instruction, ensuring student understanding of what they are about to learn and why (Fisher, 2008). Then, students and the teacher work together on the learning during guided instruction. This gives the teacher a chance to both model thinking and gauge student comprehension via prompting, facilitating, questioning, or leading tasks that increase comprehension (Fisher, 2008). The next shift in responsibility moves students to collaborative work with peers, where they use problem solving, discussion, and negotiation (Fisher, 2008). They have a chance to play with ideas, take risks, and teach and learn from each other. Autonomy, competence, and relatedness are strong components of this step. Finally, students receive a chance to independently apply what they learn. A major misconception is that this final layer is the assessment; it is not. Students must have individual practice before a teacher does a final assessment.

Decreasing the teacher’s responsibility creates more opportunities for him or her to work with individual students and small groups, allowing for daily formative assessment and feedback. The most effective teaching strategies to improve student achievement, as researcher and professor John Hattie (2012) notes—classroom discussions, clarity, reciprocal teaching, positive formative assessment, cognitive task analysis, self-questioning, and self-reporting grades—can only occur in a gradual release of responsibility format.

It is important to note that this is not a linear shifting of responsibility, but the model’s message is clear: scaffold students toward independence through guided instruction and peer collaboration. The gradual release of responsibility is a way to conceptualize consolidating learning.

Do you see the gradual release of responsibility in your instruction? Do you intentionally build its elements into your lesson plans? If you could add one step to your class tomorrow, which would it be and how would you accomplish it?

Competence

We are creatures of habit for a reason; routines are safe and outcomes are predictable. We feel successful, which adds to the sense that we are capable, or competent. We develop prototypes and schemas for how the world works, and we work to master that system. Cognitive psychologists Jean Piaget (1926) and Eleanor Rosch (1973) conceived of the concepts of prototypes and schemas for how the world works, and Ryan and Deci (2009) claim that we work to master those prototypes and schemas. In Drive, author Daniel H. Pink (2009) labels this phenomenon mastery. Pink (2009) points out the irony—that mastery is entirely elusive. There is always a deeper level to obtain. We push through frustration in hopes of achieving the excitement of mastering a concept or skill, but it is mastery that drives us to do that. Competence enables higherlevel performance and risk taking that beget greater levels of success (Pink, 2009).

What happens when we don’t feel competent? Often, we’ll disengage. Disengagement is strongly associated with a student’s beliefs about his or her academic ability (Patrick, Skinner, & Connell, 1993, as cited in Legault, Green-Demers, & Pelletier, 2006). Students cannot begin a complex task if they believe they lack competence, even though they may have the skills to begin the work (Deed, 2008b). When the student sees the learning as a mountain, he or she would rather walk around the mountain than face the perceived insurmountable challenges of the climb. Feeling competent means students are more likely to seek further development in an area. Moreover, students’ level of perceived competence is a better predictor of performance than their actual ability (Pajares & Schunk, 2002).

Do your students feel competent in the subject that you teach? How do you enable that feeling in students, and how can you tell when they feel it?

We move to self-determination theory’s relatedness element next.

Relatedness

The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle said that humans are social animals. We seek connections with others. We want to feel valued. Young people, in particular, come with a strong desire to please adults (Durden, 2011), though they also seek it with peers. And this goes beyond abstract notions. Teachers who emotionally support students report higher cognitive, emotional, and social engagement in their students (Rimm-Kaufman et al., 2015). Relatedness with your students is the most important job of a teacher. Author Maya Angelou’s (2002) experience demonstrates this importance. She became selectively mute for a number of years after a man she testified against was killed following his release from police custody. It was not until a teacher connected with her did she choose to use her voice.

For students to develop a sincere connection to school, they “need frequent, affectively pleasant or positive interactions with the same individuals, and they need these interactions to occur in a framework of long-term, stable caring and concern” (Baumeister & Leary, 1995, p. 520). Interpersonal methods build trust, and trust is crucial to relatedness. Psychological scientist Jeanne E. Ormrod (2003) says such teachers “are warm, caring individuals who, through a variety of statements and actions, communicate a respect for their students, an acceptance of them as they are, and a genuine concern about their well-being” (p. 482). How does a teacher build this connection? Make sure that instructional methods include daily guided instruction and collaboration activities. They slowly help students engage with each other and with you, the teacher. When students and teachers are working together, it changes the interactions and eventual relationships for all of them.

Do your students feel relatedness with you? How about with their peers in your classroom? How do you encourage trust and collaboration?

Student Perception

Based on my experience, students will approach tasks or the work you structure in your class different ways depending on their engagement level and the lesson’s complexity. The rubric in figure 1.3 reveals how students view any one lesson.

Figure 1.3: Engagement and complexity rubric.

Lessons can feel like chores, games, burdens, or missions. I developed this model using a simple construct of engagement on the left y-axis, beginning low and moving up to high, and the x-axis beginning with low complexity on the left. This rubric should help you frame classroom work as you move through the next chapters. I’ll use these terms to help explain student perceptions of classroom experiences. The aim is to develop high-complexity, high-engagement experiences, but it is important to recognize and be able to describe the experience when we are not reaching that goal.

Chore: Low Complexity, Low Engagement

Does your child—the one at home—like to take out the garbage? When he or she does take it out, does he or she align the cans neatly at the street, with all rubbish ready for an efficient pick up? When my son takes out the garbage, his engagement is minimal at best. There is always something else attracting his attention, and his disengagement with the chore reveals itself as needing to be reminded several times to get it done.

Chores are low-complexity, low-engagement tasks—something students feel they must get through. What do your students consider a chore? Are there small tasks they must do, such as doing traditional bell work or copying their agenda into a planner? Chances are, your students treat them the way they treat their chores at home, and you may use rewards to get them to complete these tasks. They may complete them to avoid punishment.

Game: Low Complexity, High Engagement

Does anyone have to force you to play your favorite game or app? Of course not! Most games and game-like apps like Candy Crush Saga and Angry Birds are low complexity, high-engagement tasks, and they employ specific tactics to draw you in. They are usually sleek and visually appealing. You determine when and for how long you play it. It’s social, creating different, positive connections between you and your friends. It provides different levels of challenge, each of which players must master before moving to the next. Those elements, wrapped up in a simple, routine task, release hormones in the brain that make us feel good (Dockterman, 2013; Migala, 2015).

Teachers try to replicate some of these elements—for instance, presenting a small task and providing extrinsic motivation (rewards) to raise student interest or compulsion. Think of the holiday-themed spelling list or acrostic poem. Recall the scene from Dead Poets Society (Haft, Henderson, Witt, Thomas, & Weir, 1989) where the teacher has students repeat short lines from canonized literature while kicking a ball. The boys enjoy kicking the ball and repeating the lines loudly, but there is no analysis. They are not asked to consider the literature or their relationship to the students, curriculum, or critical thinking, but they come to understand being able to repeat information has little consequence. These low-complexity tasks are an attempt to engage students. Authentic minor tasks—those that connect with student interests—can be an important scaffolding technique to build a specific skill, but a classroom cannot provide only games. Otherwise, students will never learn at the deepest levels.

Burden: High Complexity, Low Engagement

A burden is the antithesis of a game—very complex or difficult, and not engaging. This work requires carefully applying knowledge but occurs on a topic that doesn’t interest the student. If the student isn’t interested, he or she will not even attempt complex tasks such as research papers, multicomponent projects, complex mathematics problems, or high-level literature.

Mission: High Complexity, High Engagement

A mission is where high complexity and high engagement meet. A mission’s engagement is personal. A real-life example is my mother, who spent seventeen years caring for my grandmother who was sick with dementia. In the end, my mother was there every day, showing her love for her mother. The emotions and difficulties of that condition made this one of the most complex things anyone will ever do, and my mother was highly engaged. At one point, my mother’s friend said, “That must be such a burden.” It may be for some people, but my mother never saw it as a burden; it was her mission.

In the classroom, a mission can take many forms. Teachers know they’ve achieved this level when they create these experiences, and students know when they are on one. Missions allow students to hit flow—a sort of optimal state of mind (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, 2008). Flow is discussed in chapter 6 (page 71). During missions, students feel a high level of autonomy, competence, and relatedness; this is where a student is intensely engaged with a complex task.

Engagement Initiation

How can you juggle all these engagement elements? How can you create instruction and activities that land students on the mission point? The mindset-specific strategies in each chapter can help, but to start, break down your classroom approach into hook and context. A class example follows for analysis. This is launching learning for your students.

The following sections explain a hook and context, then take you through classroom examples from hypothetical educators teacher A and teacher B. Then, I’ll provide a classroom examples analysis so you can see how the hook and context look in two different scenarios.

Hook

What is the opening scene in your favorite movie or book? Did the writer begin by painting you a dramatic picture to immerse you in the story? I think of the beginning of J.K. Rowling’s (2009) Harry Potter series, one of my daughter’s favorites. Three pivotal characters, with all of their special magical abilities, dramatically appear in the night and speak about the events that left Harry Potter an orphan. In this scene, Rowling gives the reader just enough information and clues to pique interest, raise concern, ask questions, and, most important, feel emotionally connected to the character who becomes the series’ focus. That’s a good hook.

As a teacher, you open the scene for learners when you launch learning. This is the opening of a story you want students to love. Dave Burgess (2012), author of Teach Like a Pirate, suggests blending one part content, one part method, and one part delivery. For each teacher A and teacher B example in this book, I will call attention to how each teacher introduces concepts, the methods they use to interest students, and their roles during delivery.

Context