The feeling aspect of engagement at its most fundamental level boils down to motivation and whether students are motivated for learning in a particular course. The Latin derivative of motivation means “to move.” Brophy (2004) defines motivation in the classroom as “the level of enthusiasm and the degree to which students invest attention and effort in learning” (p. 4), which echoes many of the feeling definitions of student engagement. Motivation, then, is a theoretical construct to explain the reason or reasons we engage in a particular behavior. It is the feeling of interest or enthusiasm that makes somebody want to do something. In the classroom, we hope students will want to learn. Research demonstrates that motivation to learn is an acquired competence developed through an individual's cumulative experience with learning situations. It is a web of connected insights, skills, values, and dispositions that is developed over time (Brophy, 2004).
Some students come to our institutions and our classes with a high impetus to learn. Others are more motivated by the economic opportunities associated with the professions and careers they hope to have once they graduate. Regardless of a student's general disposition, motivation is also activated or suppressed in specific situations: even students who generally want to learn may be less enthusiastic in a course that they feel coerced to take because it is a required element of the general education curriculum. Conversely, students who seem generally unmotivated to learn may become quite enthusiastic about the concepts or ideas in a specific course.
The Thinking Aspect of Engagement
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.
A Model of Student Engagement
Whether teachers think primarily of the feeling or thinking elements of student engagement, they are quick to point out that both are required. A classroom filled with enthusiastic, motivated students is great, but it is educationally meaningless if it does not result in learning. Conversely, students who are learning but doing so reluctantly and resentfully are not engaged, and they are probably not learning to the extent that they could be.
Student engagement is a mental state that is the product of motivation and active learning. It is a product rather than a sum because it will not occur if either element is missing. It does not result from one or the other alone, but rather is generated in the space that resides at the overlap of motivation and active learning. Motivation and active learning work together synergistically, and as they interact, they contribute incrementally to increase engagement. From this perspective, rather than a Venn diagram that describes engagement as the overlap of active learning and motivation—thereby limiting the influence of each—engagement may be better described as a double helix in which active learning and motivation are spirals working together synergistically, building in intensity, and creating a fluid and dynamic phenomenon that is greater than the sum of their individual effects (see Figure 1.1).
Student engagement, then, is the mental state that results from the synergistic interaction between motivation and active learning. Thus, engagement occurs on a continuum: it starts at the intersection of motivation and active learning, but these two work synergistically and build in intensity. At the far end of the continuum are the transformative peak experiences that constitute the treasured milestones of an education. As attractive and appealing as these experiences are, they are not sustainable on a constant basis – that would be too exhausting for teachers and students. As college teachers, we can strive to increase instances of deep, authentic engagement, reduce the incidence of indifference and apathy that characterize disengagement, and attend to the many ways we can adapt our teaching methods to enhance engaged learning throughout the range in between.
FIGURE 1.1. Double Helix Model of Student Engagement
Source: U.S. National Library of Medicine (http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/handbook/basics/dna.html).
It's essential to remember, however, that what is motivating to one student may not be so to another. A fundamental characteristic of active learning is that students must connect what is being learned to what is already known, and what one student already knows is not the same as what is already known by another. Thus, the blend of motivating factors and active learning that promotes student engagement is unique to each individual learner. Acknowledging that engagement is referenced individually, excellent teachers who create engaging classes manage to find ways to challenge and support students at many different cognitive and developmental levels as well as create an affective environment that helps all students feel as though their presence and participation in the course matters, so that they will exert the effort necessary to learn.
Engaged Learning Behaviors
Some models of student engagement list “behavior”