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Student Engagement: A Literature Review

发布时间:2018-05-17
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Literature review

Student engagement has been extensively studied and many theories have been proposed to conceptualize it. Although the literature presents this construct in two contexts (either in a classroom or a school environment), this review will primarily concentrate on its application to the classroom context. It will cover two aspects: how to define student engagement and how to measure it. Because the phrase “student engagement” has its historic roots in studies published in North America and that British investigations which could be said to examine student engagement often overlap with other themes such as motivation, student representation and approaches to learning and are therefore less likely to be tagged as “student engagement”, this review will mainly focus on American literature.

Defining student engagement

Although studies on student engagement have proliferated in recent decades, especially in the United States, the literature reveals little consensus on how to define that complex concept. Conceptualizing is hard for two main reasons. First, studies by Fredericks, Blumenfeld and Paris (2004) and by Chapman (2006) suggest that it is a meta-construct overlapping with, but different from other constructs, such as motivation, belonging and compliance. Second, there has been a wide variety of definitions and names proposed for the engagement construct. This inconsistency in both the concepts and the terminology used to define student engagement was put forward by Appleton, Christenson and Furlong (2008) who identified 8 names and 19 definitions of engagement.

However, two lines of thought have appeared in the literature. Early studies (Brophy, 1983; Natriello, 1984) relied on observable school behaviours to describe student engagement. According to that definition, it can be outlined as students’ willingness to participate in routine school activities, such as attending class, turning in work or following teachers’ instructions. Negative forms of engagement (often called disaffection or disengagement) could be associated with unexcused absences from class or disruptive behaviour. More recently, researchers have focused on student engagement in specific learning tasks and have contended that it can be mainly understood in terms of internal states. From that perspective, students could be said to be engaged when they demonstrate positive emotions during the learning process (curiosity, interest, enthusiasm) and sustained behavioural involvement in learning tasks by concentrating on tasks and persisting despite obstacles. It appears from this second definition that student engagement is at least a two-dimensional (emotional and behavioural) construct. However, there has been some disagreement among researchers on the number and types of theoretical dimensions involved (Davis, Summers and Miller, 2012; Appleton , Christenson and Furlong, 2008).

Some scholars argue for two components (Skinner & Belmont, 1993; Finn & Voekl, 1993). The behavioural subtype describes students’ participation, effort, persistence and positive conduct whilst the emotional (or also called affective by some researchers) dimension characterises their feelings of interest, happiness, anxiety and anger during learning activities. More recent reviews of the literature result in a three-dimensional conceptualization including a cognitive component. This dimension has to do with the mental effort and investment expended on tasks, the use of deep or superficial strategies and the perseverance in the face of challenges (Fredericks, Blumenfeld, Paris, 2004). Other researchers have argued for a quadripartite definition by adding an academic component (Reschly & Christenson, 2006) in which variables such as credits earned towards graduation and homework completion correspond to criteria of academic engagement. However, this last conceptualization is particularly relevant for studies conducted in higher education, which is why the theory of the three-component model will be espoused in this paper.

Student engagement is therefore a multi-faceted construct in which all dimensions are interconnected and often overlap. It is crucial for teachers to address each level of student engagement in order for them to maximize chances to sustain their students’ engagement. The options available for teachers to assess students’ levels of engagement are now going to be examined.

How to measure student engagement?

Literature reviews on measuring student engagement reveal several methods for assessing engagement, each with its strengths and limitations. This review will focus on the four most commonly used.

Student self-reports

The most widely used method is certainly student self-reports. In such questionnaires, students are provided with items reflecting either one or several aspects of engagement, and for each question they have to choose the answer that best describes their attitude (Fredericks and McColskey, 2012). Chapman (2006) described the possible items relating to each of the three aspects of engagement. To assess cognitive engagement, students can be required to report on the mental effort and persistence they demonstrate in learning tasks. Participation and managing distractions can be used as an index of behavioural engagement. Items relating to the emotional component of engagement can require students to rate their interest and emotional reactions to learning tasks. This method presents two main advantages: it is practical and easy to administer for teachers, and it is particularly useful to gain insight into the emotional and cognitive types of engagement which are not directly observable. However, Appleton and his colleagues (2006) emphasised one main concern: the risk that students may not answer honestly, especially if the questionnaire is administered by the class teacher or if anonymity is not guaranteed, which will result in reports that do not reflect their actual engagement.

Teacher ratings of students

Teacher checklists or rating scales offers an alternative view from that reported by the students themselves. Whilst some of them contain questions evaluating emotional and behavioural engagement only (Skinner and Belmont, 1993), other reflect a multidimensional model of engagement assessing the behavioural, emotional and cognitive components (Wigfield et al., 2008). This methodology is particularly interesting when used in conjunction with self-reports in order to analyse the correspondence between what teachers infer from observable behaviours and how students perceive their own engagement. Fredericks and McColskey (2012) also suggested that it can be a preferred method for people working with young children whose literacy skills do not allow them yet to complete self-report questionnaires.

Interviews

Fewer studies have used interviews to assess engagement. Instead of simply focusing on levels of engagement, they provide an insight into the reasons why some students engage in lessons whilst some others do not. To this extent, they can be a critical technique to identify problems and decide how and where to intervene. However, interviews present more potential issues than the two techniques described above. Fredericks and McColskey (2012) identified two: the reliability and validity of the findings can be impacted by both the participants’ social desirability and the interviewer’s skills and biases.

Direct observations

Observational methods have been developed to measure individual students’ engagement at a given time. They rely on a form of momentary time sampling, in which an observer records whether a behaviour was present or absent for a student during a specific time interval (Chapman, 2003). The main concern with this type of method is that it is very time consuming to administer (each student needs to be observed individually for 5 minutes, which means that approximately 3 one-hour sessions would be needed to observe a full class), quite technical and requires proper training in order to generate reliable findings.

It should also be noted that researchers generally recommend using multiple techniques in order to strengthen the validity of findings and to provide alternative perspective on the results (Appleton et al., 2006; Fredericks and McColskey, 2012).

If several instruments are available to assess student engagement, the choice for a method over another will depend on the purpose of the study and the questions the researcher wants to answer. The next section will detail the procedure and the instrumentation used to measure the children’s levels of engagement in the present study.

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