The ABCs of student engagement  

Teachers can increase all-important student engagement by being aware of its affective, behavioral, and cognitive dimensions. 

 

The principal of a large, urban middle school enters Ms. Cecil’s 7th-grade classroom during a social studies lesson. One by one, students read a paragraph aloud from the textbook. Between readers, Ms. Cecil asks literal recall questions to random students. If students don’t answer accurately, Ms. Cecil reprimands them for not paying attention. At the end of the chapter, students dutifully get out a piece of paper, each writing her/his name and the date neatly in the right-hand corner of the page. One student asks his neighbor for a piece of paper, and Ms. Cecil quickly calls him to her desk where she scolds him for not being prepared and for talking without permission. Ms. Cecil directs students to follow their routine and complete the comprehension questions at the end of the chapter. She encourages them to cover their answers. The principal leaves the class wondering how Ms. Cecil is able to keep all her students on-task almost all the time. Most teachers in the school have difficulty with management and keeping students engaged.  

Student engagement is receiving a lot of attention lately — and rightly so. Students need to be actively engaged in order to achieve (Fredricks, Blumenfeld, & Paris, 2004). But engagement declines as students progress through the elementary grades to middle school. That makes it important for educators of all grade levels to understand engagement, how to facilitate it, and how to assess it.  

Traditionally, engagement has been conceptualized as time-on-task, which actually is only one important aspect of classroom instruction (Brophy & Good, 1986). Researchers recognize that student engagement is more complex than just observable behaviors. Consider Ms. Cecil’s classroom. Students were on task, but were they really engaged? Actively participating in academic work may well be an intuitive way to think about student engagement, but how many times have you seen students who have the uncanny ability to look busy without really accomplishing anything? How often have you observed students dutifully complete the tasks you assign without applying deep thought? Or, in the case of Ms. Cecil, have you ever been in classrooms where students are intimidated into on-task behavior? Students in these classrooms may be observed as being on task, but they’re far from demonstrating strategic consideration of content or an enthusiastic desire to learn.  

For this reason, scholars (Fredricks, Blumenfeld, & Paris, 2004; Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000) conceptualize student engagement as a construct encompassing three dimensions:

• Affective engagement
• Behavioral engagement
• Cognitive engagement

We refer to these dimensions as the ABCs of student engagement. Affective engagement includes a sense of belonging in the classroom and an interest, curiosity, or enthusiasm around specific topics or tasks (Fredricks & McColskey, 2012). Think about the student who is absolutely captivated by a science lesson that focuses on archeology because she is fascinated by dinosaurs.  

Affective engagement includes a sense of belonging in the classroom and an interest, curiosity, or enthusiasm around specific topics or tasks. 

Behavioral engagement includes time-on-task and active participation in class activities (Fredricks, 2013). But active participation is rooted in a classroom community rather than resulting from fear as in Ms. Cecil’s class. Cognitive engagement is a newer construct and includes perseverance and the use of metacognitive and self-regulated strategies. This aspect of engagement is displayed by the student who asked to stay after school to think more about the melting ice caps you mentioned in class. He consults every text you have on the topic and scours the Internet to learn more about global warming, all the while planning ways to share his learning with classmates. It is unlikely that this is the view of engagement held by Ms. Cecil’s principal. 

3 tips about student engagement 

Teachers can heighten student engagement if they understand its importance, know the types of tasks that encourage it, and have tools for assessing it.  

#1. Engagement is associated with student achievement.  

Educators strive to design engaging experiences for students because engagement is explicitly associated with student achievement. For example, Skinner and Pitzer (2012) explain that engagement is “a robust predictor of student learning, grades, achievement test scores, retention, and graduation” (p. 21). In their analysis of the Program for International Student Assessment results, Brozo, Shiel, and Topping (2008) identified reading engagement as one of the most powerful factors affecting students’ reading achievement. Kirsch et al. (2002) found that engagement “has the largest correlation with achievement in reading literacy” (p. 124). And because broadly conceived engagement is closely associated with achievement, teachers should strive to design engaging activities.  

#2. Teachers can increase and decrease student engagement. 

Students are not inherently engaged or disengaged. Rather, student engagement is malleable and dynamic (Malloy, Parsons, & Parsons, 2013). A student’s engagement is influenced by the specific context and situation. For example, Fredricks and McColskey (2012) explain that student engagement “cannot be separated from their environment” (p. 765). This is good news because teachers can alter the classroom context. Engaging classroom contexts are cooperative (as opposed to competitive) and are efficient — adequately structured with established rules and routines. Teachers can create engaging classroom contexts by showing students that they care about them and by maintaining a positive social environment. Think back to Ms. Cecil’s classroom. It was efficient, but it certainly wasn’t cooperative, caring, or social.  

While creating a collaborative, efficient, and caring classroom environment is essential for creating a context conducive to student engagement, researchers have demonstrated that the academic tasks teachers assign are the central aspect influencing student engagement (Perry, Turner, & Meyer, 2006). Tasks that are engaging share several characteristics. First, engaging tasks are authentic. Students are engaged in activities that are relevant to their own lives and that mimic real-world situations. Second, collaborative tasks are engaging for students. Perry, Phillips, and Dowler observed that “children not only enjoy working together in supportive contexts, but their collaborations enhance their understanding, confidence, and regulation of learning” (2004, p. 1873). Third, engaging tasks give students choices, where they can experience some control over their learning. Finally, engaging tasks are appropriately challenging. Pressley explains, “The data are overwhelming that tasks a little bit beyond the learner’s current competence level are motivating” (2006,  p. 387). Ms. Cecil’s instruction was likely challenging for some students, but it was not authentic, collaborative, or student-directed.      

Student engagement is malleable, and teachers have the ability to design contexts and tasks that encourage or discourage student engagement. Teachers create an engaging environment by fostering cooperation, positiveness, and tasks that are authentic, collaborative, and challenging. Consider the following examples from two 4th-grade classrooms: Teacher A talks through a PowerPoint™ presentation about Colonial America. While students listen, they quietly complete a listening guide where they fill in teacher-provided details such as historical dates and places. Afterward, students used their guides to independently write a brief summary. Teacher B also shares a PowerPoint™ presentation, but hers is filled with maps and photos of Colonial Williamsburg, including period dress, occupations, and architecture. She shares photocopies of primary source documents, such as a tavern cookbook, a housewife’s letter back to England, and a school child’s hornbook. She asks students to discuss the materials and information, comparing it with details in their textbook, and then work in small groups to create a journal entry of a fictional citizen of Colonial Williamsburg.  

Teacher A provides a set of tasks that is fairly typical in upper elementary classrooms, but they lack authenticity, collaboration, and choice. Challenge is negligible because there is no opportunity for independent thought. On the other hand, Teacher B provides a cooperative environment by engaging students in discussion, includes authentic photographs and artifacts, and invites students to step into the shoes of a colonial citizen. Students collaborate to craft their fictional citizen and the journal entry, choose relevant details from the materials, and are appropriately challenged by the open-ended nature of the task. Given the choice, which classroom would 4th graders likely find more engaging? 

#3. There are a variety of ways to evaluate student engagement. 

If Ms. Cecil were to evaluate her students’ engagement, what might she discover? Do her students talk about their learning outside class? Do they get frustrated easily, or are they equipped with learning strategies that help them persevere? By understanding student engagement levels, educators can alter the tasks they assign, which will increase or decrease student engagement (Malloy et al., 2013). We can evaluate student engagement by thinking of it as residing along a spectrum. Theorists have developed models of a continuum spanning from engagement to disaffection (Skinner & Belmont, 1993). When students are highly engaged, they actively participate in class discussions, are enthusiastic, and have a positive attitude toward schoolwork. When students are disengaged, they are bored and indifferent about academic tasks (see Table 1).  

Practitioners and researchers have worked to develop different ways of assessing affective, behavioral, and cognitive engagement through student self-reporting, teacher reporting, and observation protocols (see Table 2).  

As Table 2 demonstrates, the items on the scale are clear and concise. A teacher can complete a report about a student in one minute. Student self-reports can take as little as five minutes. Principals and school administrators can use the Instructional Practices Inventory (IPI) by observing student learning throughout the year. Teachers and building administrators should work collaboratively in evaluating student engagement to develop goals for school improvement efforts that go beyond standardized assessment scores. Student engagement assessments contribute to a comprehensive understanding of student performance. If Ms. Cecil’s students are bored and uninterested in her middle school social studies class, those students will likely become less and less engaged over the school year and throughout the remainder of their academic careers.  

Conclusion 

Students who have teachers like Ms. Cecil are less likely to live up to their academic potential and are more likely to drop out of school because they have become disengaged from their learning. As schools are held accountable for students’ academic achievement, educators must understand how students learn and identify tasks that provide students opportunities for optimal success in their learning. To understand achievement, we must understand student engagement. To understand engagement, we must understand the affective, behavioral, and cognitive dimensions — the ABCs of student engagement. 

 

References 

Brophy, J. & Good, T. (1986). Teacher behavior and student achievement. In M. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (Vol. 3, pp. 328-375). New York, NY: MacMillan.  

Brozo, W.G., Shiel, G., & Topping, K. (2008). Engagement in reading: Lessons learned from three PISA countries. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 51, 304-315.  

Fredricks, J. (2013). Behavior engagement in learning. In J. Hattie & E.M. Anderman (Eds.), International guide to student achievement (pp. 42-44). New York, NY: Routledge. 

Fredricks, J.A., Blumenfeld, P.C., & Paris, A.H. (2004). School engagement: Potential of the concept, state of the evidence. Review of Educational Research, 74, 59-109. 

Fredricks, J.A. & McColskey, W. (2012). The measurement of student engagement: A comparative analysis of various methods and student self-report instruments. In S.L. Christenson, A.L. Reschly, & C. Wylie (Eds.), Handbook of research on student engagement (pp. 763-782). New York, NY: Springer. 

Guthrie, J.T. & Wigfield, A. (2000). Engagement and motivation in reading. In M.L. Kamil, P. Mosenthal, P.D. Pearson, & R. Barr (Eds.), Handbook of reading research (Vol. 3, pp. 403-422). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 

Kirsch, I., de Jong, J., Lafontaine, D., McQueen, J., Mendelovits, J., & Monseur, C. (2002). Reading for change: Performance and engagement across countries. Paris, France: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. 

Malloy, J.A., Parsons, S.A., & Parsons, A.W. (2013). Methods for evaluating literacy engagement as a fluid construct. 62nd Yearbook of the Literacy Research Association, 124-139. 

Perry, N.E., Phillips, L., & Dowler, J. (2004). Examining features of tasks and their potential to promote self-regulated learning. Teachers College Record, 106, 1854-1878. 

Perry, N.E., Turner, J.C., & Meyer, D.K. (2006). Classrooms as contexts for motivating learning. In P.A. Alexander & P.H. Winne (Eds.), Handbook of educational psychology (2nd ed.) (pp. 327-348). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 

Pressley, M. (2006). Reading instruction that works: The case for balanced teaching (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Guilford. 

Skinner, E.A. & Belmont, M.J. (1993). Motivation in the classroom: Reciprocal effects of teacher behavior and student engagement across the school year. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85 (4), 571-581. 

Skinner, E.A., Kindermann, T.A., & Furrer, C. (2009). A motivational perspective on engagement and disaffection: Conceptualization and assessment of children’s behavioral and emotional participation in academic activities in the classroom. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 69, 493-525. 

Skinner, E.A. & Pitzer, J.R. (2012). Developmental dynamics of student engagement, coping, and everyday resilience. In S.L. Christenson, A.L. Reschly, & C. Wylie (Eds.), Handbook of research on student engagement (pp. 21-44). New York, NY: Springer. 

Wigfield, A., Guthrie, J.T., Perencevich, K.C., Taboada, A., Klauda, S.L., McRae, A., & Barbosa, P. (2008). Role of reading engagement in mediating effects of reading comprehension on reading outcomes. Psychology in the Schools, 45, 432-445.

Citation: Parsons, S.A., Nuland, L.R., & Parsons, A.W. (2014). The ABCs of student engagement. Phi Delta Kappan, 95 (8), 23-27.