The Vital Role Of Student Engagement In Education
Student engagement is essential to student success. After all, when students are engaged, they're more likely to retain information, achieve learning outcomes, and excel academically. The opposite is true when students are disengaged. They won't find their education meaningful and will struggle to pay attention, leading to poor academic performance.
In this article, we'll provide strategies to ensure students enjoy and actively participate in the learning process. First, though, we must define student engagement, explain its importance, and examine factors that promote or hinder it.
What Is Student Engagement?
Student engagement refers to how interested, involved, and invested students are in their learning activities. Engaged students actively participate in class, strive to understand the learning material, and are more likely to perform well in their studies.
There are three types of student engagement: behavioral, emotional, and cognitive. Behavioral engagement refers to student behaviors and actions. For example, completing assignments, following classroom rules, and engaging in discussions.
Emotional engagement focuses on how students feel about their learning. This includes their level of interest, enjoyment, and sense of belonging. Finally, cognitive engagement is the mental effort that students exert. This includes their critical thinking, problem-solving, and understanding of the topic.
All three types are interconnected and play a central role in a student's learning experience. For instance, a student who is interested in the class content (emotional engagement) will likely complete their assignments and participate in class discussions (behavioral engagement), activities that promote critical thinking and problem-solving (cognitive engagement).
Why Is Student Engagement In Education Important?
When students are engaged, they're more likely to excel academically, develop critical skills, and experience personal growth. Let's look at each of these advantages in closer detail.
Engaged Students Have Better Academic Performance
Various studies link student engagement and academic performance. Engaged students are more likely to participate in class, ask questions, be motivated to learn, and strive to develop a deeper understanding of a topic. By directly engaging in the learning process, students can retain information. This will lead to better grades, higher test scores, and stronger overall achievement.
Engaged Students Develop Valuable Skills
An empirical study of medical students found students' emotional engagement promoted learning outcomes in basic medical knowledge and clinical skills. In other words, engaged students often acquire knowledge and skills relevant to the subject they're studying. Besides developing subject-specific skills, engaged students also acquire essential life skills like critical thinking, problem-solving, communication, and collaboration.
Engaged Students Experience Greater Personal Development
Students who value their education take ownership of it by setting goals, monitoring their progress, and seeking additional assistance when needed. Doing so instills values like responsibility, accountability, and resilience, which are pivotal to students' self-actualization .
What Factors Promote Or Hinder Student Engagement?
Several factors influence student engagement. According to a meta-analysis by professors Jian Li and Eryong Xue, factors that promote student engagement include:
- Students' positive emotion.
- Positive learning behavior.
- Positive teacher behavior.
- The teacher-student relationship and partnership.
- Students' learning and thinking ability.
- The support of learning resources.
- Students' individual and personality characteristics.
- Teaching factors.
Meanwhile, factors that hinder student engagement include:
- Lack of environmental support.
- Negative student behavior.
- Negative teacher behavior.
Therefore, a simple way to enhance student engagement is to turn controllable negative factors into positive ones. For example, demonstrating positive teacher behavior, providing a supportive learning environment, and improving relationships with students.
How Do You Measure Student Engagement?
Student engagement can be difficult to measure because of the multifaceted nature of engagement and individual differences in how students respond to their education. However, there are two methods teachers can use to gauge students' interest in the learning process.
One option is to survey students through formal questionnaires or other assessment tools. For example, teachers can leverage engagement sliders, which use surveys to assess two dimensions of student engagement: 1) students' enjoyment, and 2) sense of challenge.
Observational methods are another option. Here, teachers, administrators, or other outsiders observe students' behavior in the classroom. They can assess student engagement based on the following engaged student behaviors identified by educator and author Ben Johnson:
- Paying attention
- Taking notes
- Asking questions
- Responding to questions
- Following requests
- Reacting
Working On The Work: A Framework For Successfully Engaging Students
Phillip Schlechty's "Working on the Work" framework provides a useful approach for understanding and increasing student engagement. The framework focuses on improving student performance by enhancing the quality of schoolwork.
According to the framework, teachers can increase the chances of students being engaged in learning activities by including design qualities of context and design qualities of choice. Design qualities of context are common aspects of tasks and activities that affect student engagement even if the teacher doesn't consider them. They include:
- Content and substance
The task is interesting to students. - Organization of knowledge
The task is well-organized. - Clear and compelling product standards
Students understand the work they need to do and how it will be evaluated; they also value the evaluation standards. - Protection from adverse consequences for initial failures
Students are comfortable trying the activity because they will not be punished for initially failing it.
Meanwhile, design qualities of choice are qualities the teacher can include or remove depending on their assessment of students' needs and interests. They include:
- Product focus
The task is linked to a performance or product that is meaningful to the student. - Affirmation of performance
The activity allows students' work to be seen and appreciated by important people in the students' lives. - Affiliation
The task allows students to work with peers and adults. - Novelty and variety
The activity involves different media and teaching methods. - Choice
The work allows students to choose what and how they learn. - Authenticity
The task is linked to students' interests.
By infusing learning activities with these qualities, teachers can make work more meaningful and engaging to students. This will lead to improved performance and achievement.
7 Effective Strategies To Promote Student Engagement In Education
Understanding the elements behind student engagement is critical to identifying effective engagement strategies. With that being said, below are seven engagement-enhancing strategies that follow Schlechty's "Working on the Work" framework.
1. Add Variety To Your Teaching
Variety makes education interesting and dynamic. It also captures students' attention and makes them more willing to participate in class. One way to incorporate variety is to teach for different learning styles. For example, use images and videos for visual learners. For auditory learners, use music and other sounds. Reading and writing learners respond well to reading assignments and writing exercises. Meanwhile, kinesthetic students learn best with hands-on activities.
2. Make Content Relatable To Students
Content that is relevant to students builds emotional connections. It also helps them recognize relationships between the material and what they consider meaningful. When appropriate, incorporate pop culture into lessons, like using clever parodies of popular songs to reinforce historical facts. You can also allow students to use social media as a research tool for certain assignments. This enables them to tap into their tech-savviness.
3. Gamify Learning
According to a study, positive emotions from gamified education improve students' enjoyment of learning, which in turn promotes their study engagement. Gamification applies gaming elements like badges, points, and leaderboards to traditional learning activities. For instance, when reviewing for an exam, you could gamify the process by having the class play Kahoot! Students would enjoy the fun format and be motivated to perform well because of friendly competition with peers. You could also try game-based learning, where games are the primary teaching tool, as with virtual simulations and role-playing.
4. Give Students A Choice
Letting students choose gives them a sense of ownership over their education. This encourages active learning because students get to decide what and how they learn. Give students a say in their education by letting them choose the topic covered in the next unit, for example. Students could also choose the project medium. For instance, they could choose between making a video, writing a research paper, or creating a drawing for the final project. Another option is to allow students to influence assessment design, such as letting them decide whether a test will be multiple choice, short answer, matching, or a combination.
5. Use All-Participation Student Response Activities
All-participation student response activities involve active participation from the entire class. This means students who regularly raise their hands in class aren't the only ones engaging. Instead, everyone gets the chance to provide an answer or share their thoughts. An example is having the entire class respond to questions by using dry-erase boards. Or, you could conduct a poster walk where students walk around the classroom and write responses to prompts featured on various posters. This way, students are mentally and physically engaging with lesson material, enhancing their understanding of class content.
6. Make Learning Interactive
Students lose focus and motivation when their learning is limited to monotonous lectures. Make lessons more interesting by incorporating interactive elements like multimedia content, educational games, and tech-based activities. For example, create presentations that feature text, images, videos, GIFs, and more. Quiz students using Quizizz and other games. Finally, allow students to work on their assignments using Chromebooks or desktop computers. You can also include hands-on activities like lab experiments or model-building exercises. This way, students will have the opportunity to work together and apply their knowledge.
7. Encourage Student Collaboration
Working with peers helps students gain a different understanding of the material. Other students can clarify a topic and help their peers comprehend the lesson better. Student collaboration can also forge friendships, making the learning process more enjoyable. A popular collaborative activity is think-pair-shares. In this exercise, a student reflects on a question or problem, discusses it with a partner, and then the pair shares their discussion with the class. Small group discussions are another alternative where students collaborate to achieve learning outcomes and build connections in the process.
Conclusion
If students don't feel invested in their studies, their performance will reflect it. Not only will their grades slip, but they'll potentially disrupt the learning process for other students.
For that reason, teachers should strive to engage all students. To do so, educators should add variety to their teaching methods, make content relatable to students, give learners a say in their education, and encourage collaboration. By employing these strategies, teachers can make learning enjoyable and meaningful for everyone.
As a result of effectively engaging students, educators will be able to equip them with valuable skills like interpersonal, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills. Ultimately, teachers will see students take their achievements beyond the classroom, with engaged learners eventually leveraging them in the workforce and other areas of life.
FAQs
What is the goal of student engagement?
The goal of student engagement is to foster a dynamic learning environment where students are motivated, invested, and involved in their education. As a result, learners will excel in their studies and develop vital skills like communication, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills.
What are examples of student engagement activities?
Examples of student engagement activities include think-pair-share exercises, group projects, simulations, peer teaching, and interactive polls.
