What the Research Says About How We Can Get Our Students More Involved in Their Learning
Does teaching sometimes feel like pulling alligator teeth? You have these amazing things you want to teach your students, but they just don’t want to learn it. They’d rather sleep or stare at a screen and play Fortnite.
Engagement is the first step in getting your kids to learn. If you’re not authentically engaging them, they’re not going to be learning much.
Sure, they might go through the motions of doing things just to get things done or to get the grade, but there will be very little long term learning.
What is authentic student engagement?
Before we can dive into strategies to improve student engagement, it’s important to take a step back and define what it is. Researchers don’t actually agree on an exact definition, but most of them agree on a lot of similar things. Vicki Trowler, from Lancaster University, did an in-depth review and summary of the research around student engagement.
There’s a very helpful section where she discusses the dimensions of engagement. In it, she beautifully describes authentic student engagement: “Engagement is more than involvement or participation – it requires feelings and sense-making as well as activity. Acting without feeling engaged is just involvement or even compliance; feeling engaged without acting is dissociation.”
Then she gives a roundup of what Benjamin Bloom has identified as the three faces of student engagement: behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement. She also agrees with other researchers that each of these dimensions have three levels of engagement: positive engagement, non-engagement, and negative engagement. Any one learner can fall along different levels for each dimension.
Behavioral Dimension of Student Engagement
Students who are positively engaged in this dimension are your dream students in terms of behavior. They will show up, follow teacher rules, answer questions, participate in discussions, and so forth. But, if students are not engaged at all, they won’t show up or participate in class activities. And if they’re negatively engaged, they’ll act in a way that actively disrupts the learning.
Emotional Dimension of Student Engagement
When students are positively engaged emotionally, they’ll have positive feelings related to their learning activities. For example, they’ll feel interest, joy, support, sense of belonging, etc. Non-engaged students would probably feel apathy or boredom. Negatively engaged students would feel things like rejection, exclusion, etc.
Cognitive Dimension of Student Engagement
Students who are positively engaged in the cognitive dimension work hard to truly understand the topic. They don’t give up even if it’s hard or takes a long time (Rotgans and Schmidt, 2011). They seek challenges that engage their thinking. If they are negatively engaged, they’ll reject or challenge ideas or academic tasks. They might even reinvent assignments to their liking.
Trowler created the table below to better illustrate the dimensions of student engagement:
So, ideally, our learners should be engaged positively in all three dimensions of student engagement. We want them to show up and actively participate in class activities; to feel enjoyment, interest, and belonging; and to persevere in learning as much about the topic as possible.
But this isn’t always the case. Sometimes we struggle with engaging our students in learning. Knowing the three dimensions of student engagement and the levels of engagement within them is really helpful. This information will help us identify problem areas. It will also help us craft more engaging lessons that target these dimensions.
How can we improve student engagement?
Leah Taylor and Jim Parsons of the University of Alberta also did a review of the research and literature regarding student engagement. They focused on figuring out the best ways to engage learners of today.
They follow Carie Windham’s (2005) suggestion that in order to better engage learners, activities need to include “interaction, exploration, relevancy, multimedia and instruction”. A lot of the research they reviewed also agree with this suggestion. Let me summarize their findings for you:
Interaction
It’s probably pretty obvious to you that many of our learners are very social. As they say, “no man is an island.” Even our more introverted students need interaction.
Our students want meaningful interactions with their teachers and each other. They want teachers who know how they learn. And they crave more collaborative learning environments. Students today want to learn from each other and from experts in the community. They value learning from dialogue and learning from the perspectives of others.
Students are far more engaged when teachers model learning rather than work to simply transmit information. As Jodene Dunleavy and Penny Milton beautifully summarizes, “Intellectually engaging work taps into learning as a highly social activity – expert learners are able to explain their thinking, elaborate on their ideas, and consider multiple (and sometimes dissonant) viewpoints as they negotiate individual and shared meanings” (Dunleavy and Milton, 2009, pg. 15).
And, of course, a good relationship with the teacher is crucial for learners to feel socially and psychologically engaged in their learning. Many students who’ve struggled through hard times credit their success to a caring and trusting relationship with an adult.
It is important to know, though, that according to students, a caring and trusting relationship with the teacher doesn’t mean that there’s no discipline and consequences. On the contrary, Taylor and Parsons have this to say based on their review of the research: “It is worth noting that students expect and respect challenging, rigorous, disciplined, positive, and safe learning environments” (Taylor and Parsons, 2011, pg 11).
Exploration
Many students feel most engaged when lessons and classes are based on problem solving, investigation, and exploration. Rather than learning information passively from the teacher, students enjoy the process of finding answers for themselves. They crave the challenge of coming to their own conclusions based on the work they do. They want to explore and investigate the topic.
Researchers agree that technology plays a crucial part in our learners’ ability to explore and investigate. The internet opens up the world. It gives them access to information they would not otherwise find locally or easily. It allows them to see how other people do things so that they can try it out for themselves.
Relevancy
Learners are more engaged when they see how things apply to the real world, especially to their own lives. When they’re able to work on a problem that actually affects their community, then it’s an authentic and meaningful learning experience. Because it’s not forced or simulated, learners see these types of learning experiences as worthy of their time.
Multimedia and Technology
As I’ve mentioned before, technology is crucial for our learners today. It opens up the world to them and gives them access to more expertise than what the teacher can provide. This access is key to creating a learning community where teachers can model learning and learn together with their students.
Access to the technology of today also helps teachers save time, engage more of the senses, differentiate instruction, and give students more responsibility for their learning. According to researchers, it helps students learn how to spend their resources and time more wisely. It gives them the opportunity to learn beyond the classroom.
Researchers emphasize that multimedia and technology help create a rich learning environment and something called learning ecologies. In a learning ecology, information and the way it’s gathered and learned is fluid, complex, dynamic, and interdependent.
But event though there’s a lot of research that shows the benefits of using technology, there’s also evidence that it’s clearly not about using technology for the sake of technology. Taylor and Parsons cite concerns about the negative effects of technology on the development of social and cognitive skills and on academic performance.
Steven Higgins, ZhiMin Xiao and Maria Katsipataki conducted a review in 2012 of the research regarding the impact of technology on learning from the past 40 years. They found that even though the overall findings seem to be positive, a closer look shows that there is just too much technology to pinpoint exactly what is effective. In addition, the research shows that the use of technology is not as effective as other research backed teaching methods like peer tutoring and providing feedback.
Researchers don’t argue that technology engages and motivates learners. But they really emphasize the careful and thoughtful use of technology when it comes to teaching and learning. Here is a summary of what they’ve found according to Higgins et al. (2012):
- Using technology in pairs and small groups is usually more effective than individual use.
- Teachers can use technology effectively for intervention if they do so frequently and regularly (ex: three times in a week) over 5-10 weeks. Longer use is not as effective.
- It’s a practical tool for catching up for students with special needs or for those who are far behind their peers.
- It should not replace teaching but supplement it.
- Tech use seems to be more helpful in improving math, science, and writing over reading and spelling. But we need to do more research.
- Teachers need inquiry-based professional development around the use of new technology. This will show them how they can successfully teach with the technology rather than just learn how to use the technology.
We can definitely conclude from the research that technology is a “catalyst for change” (Higgins et al., 2012) and is a powerful tool for student engagement. The question is how we can use it effectively in our teaching.
Engaging and Challenging Instruction
Most researchers have found that students crave rigorous, challenging, high quality education. Learners want better curriculum, and they also want better teaching. They don’t reject the need for more core knowledge or traditional literacy, but they want to be more engaged. Students want to learn how they learn and take part in the design of their own instruction. They want what they learn to be more interconnected rather than separated into subjects and with more applications to real life.
Researchers also acknowledge that changes in technology have created something called new “literacies”. Learners need these skills to navigate our modern world. They are critical and creative thinking; communication and interpersonal skills; information, media, and technology skills. Even though today’s learners are very tech savvy, they still need guidance on how to gather and sift through all the information that is available.
Conclusion
So as you can see, there’s a lot to student engagement. Learners of today want to play a more active part in their instruction. They’re driven by relationships, curiosity about the real world, and curiosity about themselves. Engaging them is not all about just bells and whistles. It’s about creating challenging and meaningful experiences that allow them to connect with others and with themselves. It requires careful and purposeful planning on the part of the teacher.
I hope this has been a helpful article for you. I’m sorry about the long hiatus. Next week, I’ll provide some real examples that apply the information above to your own teaching of social studies. In the meantime, please feel free to look at my class offerings for history debates to get some ideas for yourself. I’ve designed these units to align as much of the research as possible. They also have a proven track record in the classroom. If you are interested in talking more about how you can do the same for your own teaching, please feel free to book a free consultation. I’d be happy to talk more about it with you one on one.
Have a blessed and beautiful day!
Works Cited and Further Reading
Dunleavy, J. & Milton, P. (2009). What did you do in school today? Exploring the concept of
Student Engagement and its implications for Teaching and Learning in Canada. Toronto:
Canadian Education Association (CEA), 1-22.
Retrieved April 2022 from https://education.alberta.ca/media/3069762/cea-2009-wdydist-concept.pdf
Rotgans, J. I., & Schmidt, H. G. (2011). Cognitive engagement in the problem-based learning classroom. Advances in health sciences education : theory and practice, 16(4), 465–479. Retrieved April 2022 from https://doi.org/10.1007/s10459-011-9272-9
Taylor, L. & Parsons, J. (2011). Improving Student Engagement. Current Issues in Education,
14(1). Retrieved April 2022 from https://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/download/745/162
Trowler, V. (2010). Student Engagement Literature Review. The Higher Education Academy. Retrieved April 2022 from https://www.academia.edu/743769/Student_engagement_literature_review
Windham, C. (2005). The Student’s Perspective. In D. Oblinger & J. Oblinger (Eds), Educating
the Net generation (pp. 5.1-5.16). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE. Retrieved April 2022. https://www.educause.edu/research-and-publications/books/educating-net-generation/students-perspective
Higgins, S; Xiao, Z. & Katsipataki, M. (2012)The Impact of Digital Technology on Learning: A Summary for the Education Endowment Foundation. Education Endowment Foundation ERIC Number: ED612174
Retrieved April 2022 from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED612174.pdf
What to Read Next
The Best Strategies for Learning Pt 1
How to Level Up Your Class Discussions
Ten Simple and Creative Ways to Make the Textbook More Engaging
How to Make History Class Engaging from the Very Beginning of the Year