Читать книгу Student Engagement Techniques - Elizabeth F. Barkley - Страница 16

In addition to describing a feeling aspect to engagement, when we ask them for their definitions, college teachers also describe student engagement with phrases like “engaged students are trying to make meaning of what they are learning” or “engaged students are involved in the academic task at hand and are using higher-order thinking skills, such as analyzing information or solving problems.” They recognize that learning is a dynamic process that consists of making sense and meaning out of new information by connecting it to what is already known. Students likewise respond to questions about engagement with something along the lines of “getting the student more involved in their own learning and becoming active learners.” They too recognize the thinking aspect of engagement.

In the literature, the thinking aspect of student engagement has been described as “the student's psychological investment in and effort directed toward learning, understanding, or mastering the knowledge, skills, or crafts that academic work is intended to promote” (Newmann, Wehlage, & Lamborn, 1992, p. 12). This thinking aspect is what is referred to in the literature as “cognitive engagement” (Appleton, Christenson, & Furlong, 2008; Fredericks et al., 2004; Marks, 2000; Reschly, Huebner, Appleton, & Antaramian, 2008; Skinner, Kindermann, & Furrer, 2009). This type of engagement focuses on student intellectual investment in the content, lesson, or activity.

What this intellectual effort and investment in learning boils down to is active learning. Bonwell and Eison (1991) neatly define active learning as “doing what we think and thinking about what we are doing” (p. iii). We distinguish between active learning, which consists of intellectual effort and deep processing, and active learning techniques. Active learning suggests that the mind is actively engaged. Its defining characteristics are that students are dynamic participants in their learning and that they are reflecting on and monitoring both the processes and the results of their learning. (Active learning techniques are instructional activities that help students achieve active learning.) As Cross (1998b) notes, a chess player may sit for hours without talking or moving, but with active mental engagement for studying the layout of the pieces and strategizing the next move. Highly skilled listeners who are involved in a lecture by self-questioning, analyzing, and incorporating new information into their existing knowledge are learning more actively than a student who is participating in a small group discussion that is off-task, redundant, or superfluous. It is this definition of active learning, where students take information or a concept and make it their own by connecting it to their existing knowledge and experience that is critical to student engagement. An engaged student actively examines, questions, and relates new ideas to old, thereby achieving the kind of deep learning that lasts. Active learning is fundamental to and underlies all aspects of student engagement.