What is 'engagement' in education?

‘Engagement is obviously a central aspect of effective teaching. If students are not engaged, there is little, if any, change that they will address what is being learnt in class.’ (Marzano & Pickering, 2011, p 1)

Teachers almost tacitly feel ‘Engagement’ in education. Yet after yesterday’s online session, I recognised that I need to make this term more specific in my research. The majority of practitioners that work in education will understand and recognise what is meant by the term ‘engagement’. Again the majority of practitioners use it regularly in their everyday practices, whether they use it in a conversation with a colleague, or in the classroom by recognising when a student is ‘engaged’ or ‘disengaged’. In my own practices, I recognise when students are not engaging on a daily basis.

Wilson (2009, p. 16) states that, ‘educational discourse, like other forms of specialist discourse, is constructed by the specialist groups and serves the interests of the particular groups’. Furthermore, ‘In some situations, where such discourse remains unchallenged, it comes to be perceived and experienced by groups as though it offers an explanation of a natural, shared process or common sense wisdom’ (Wilson, 2009, p. 16). I feel this summarises my dilemma perfectly. We use ‘engagement’ in education so regularly, that actually defining this becomes extremely difficult. So, what is ‘engagement’ in education?

Schaufeli & Bakker (2006, p 701) define engagement as ‘a positive work-related state of fulfilment that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption’.

Skinner, Kinderman & Furrer (2009, p. 494) state that ‘engagement refers to the quality of a student’s connection or involvement with the endeavor of schooling and hence with the people, activities, goal, values, and place that compose it’.

The Education glossary (2015) posit that, ‘In education, student engagement refers to the degree of attention, curiosity, interest, optimism, and passion that students show when they are learning or being taught, which extents to the level of motivation they have to learn and progress in their education’.

Wang, Bergin & Bergin (2014, p. 517) offer a concise definition in, ‘Classroom engagement refers to a student’s active involvement in classroom learning activities’

Although this TED Talk video does not define engagement, I find Christopher Emdin’s arguments about what makes an engaging teacher both interesting and relevant to my inquiry.

These definitions have helped me to understand exactly what is meant by engagement, but I feel I have only scratched the surface. I need to conduct more research to find the answer to my own question, ‘what is meant by ‘engagement’ in education?’

Bibliography

Emdin, C (2013) TED Talks: Teach teachers how to create magic [Internet] Available from: https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_emdin_teach_teachers_how_to_create_magic [Accessed on 19 November 2015]

Great Schools Partnership (2015) The Glossary of Education Reform: Student Engagement [Internet] Available from: http://edglossary.org/student-engagement/ [Accessed on 6 November 2015]

Marzano, R. J. & Pickering, D. J. (2011) The Highly Engaged Classroom. USA: Marzano Research Laboratory

Schaufeli, W. B. & Bakker, A. B (2006) Educational and Psychological Measurement Volume 66, Issue 4, August 2006, pp. 701-716

Skinner, E. A., Kindermann, T. A. & Furrer, C. J. (2009) Educational and Psychological Measurement Volume 69, Issue, 3 June, 2009, pp. 493-525

Wang, z., Bergin, C. & Bergin D. A. (2014) Measuring Engagement in Fourth to Twelfth Grade Classrooms: The Classroom Engagement Inventory. School Psychology Quarterly, 2014, Volume 29, Issue 4, pp. 517–535