Disengaged Students

Encouraging engagement in students

The topic of disengaged students has been a focus for my assignments since the very beginning of Mindlab. What is engagement? What motivates ākonga to be engaged? 

Engagement is complex and it is a cognitive process. When we think of ākonga we need to consider 1) how invested are they in their own learning and 2) their personal learning strategies, Hattie (2009).

Once we define engagement it can be measured. 
It has multiple layers:
1. behaviour
2. emotional 
3. cognitive

According to Hattie (2009) what we need are practical strategies to encourage positive outcomes and promote engagement.

Engagement = connected with learning 

Cognitive:  Engagement depends on a student's psychological investment in their own learning

"When cognitively engaged, students concentrate, focus on achieving goals, are flexible in their work and cope with failure" (Hattie, 2009, p. 2)

Behaviour: Engagement looks like students' participating in learning and classroom activities. Behavioural engagement is the easiest to measure. This means that students who able to control and regulate themselves look like they are "physically ready and willing to learn". 

Emotional: We can develop emotional engagement through relationships between students and their teachers, classmates and school. This has also been called 'identification' with school and learning practices.  Students are engaged when they feel included in the school and feel an emotional bond with the school, its teachers and their peers.

Ākonga need to be connected to their learning in a holistic way. They need to believe in what they are doing, feel safe and respected and be psychologically ready to learn.


The challenge is to measure all of these types of engagement (p. 5)

Hattie (2009) also goes on to explain different types of student and teacher questioning.

• Active answering – students voluntarily answer questions 
• Passive answering – students answer questions when requested by teachers 
• Question raising – students voluntarily ask the teacher questions

Do teachers identify engagement?  (p. 6)

More attention is needed for the "quietly" disengaged. 

"teachers are observed, and observe other teachers, with the aim of improving teaching and student learning outcomes." but what is the focus of this appraisal?

• learning outcomes of students 
• teachers’ verbal attention to students’ work (encouraging and recognising positive performance; continually asking questions and instructing students) 
• teachers’ non-verbal attention to students (eye contact, body language) 
• teachers’ individual instruction to students (provides personal instructions to students when they are involved in activities) 
• students’ involvement (answering questions, raising questions, engaging in activities)

These are important as they recognise the role that teachers can play in stimulating the engagement of students.

Dimensions of student engagement:

• participation in activities (behavioural engagement)
• asking questions (cognitive) and
• responding to teachers’ feedback (emotional).

Ultimately too, these positive learning behaviours recognise the impact that they should have on the learning outcomes of students.

What are the consequences of disengagement?  (p. 7)

learning outcomes?  achievement?

How to promote engagement?

Some studies have shown that engagement is increased through flexible, individualised teaching in a supportive learning environment. 

Project-based learning, for example, allows students to own their own task. 
Strong student-teacher relationships create a classroom where students feel safe and engaged. 
Student monitoring is a key step for teachers to assess whether they are having an impact on students.

Project-based learning  (p. 8)

Many disengaged students feel that school is not relevant to them. Engaging teaching is personalised and motivating for students.

Student-teacher relationships

Hattie (2009) finds that strong classroom management and student-teacher relationships have a significant impact on engagement and achievement

This means providing students with a safe environment: physically safe, and a place where students feel able to make mistakes.

Motivation is a fundamental part of engagement that is difficult to encourage where students are cautious about contributing and dispirited when corrected. 

Mutual respect drives high expectations. 

This leads to self-regulated learning where a student is able to shape their own goals.

Effective and engaging teachers ensure they are implementing approaches that will work for their students.

In this keynote speech John Hattie talks about not caring about how you teach but rather how your teaching impacts learners and what you think about your teaching.

https://visible-learning.org/2017/08/john-hattie-how-you-teach-video/

References:
Hattie, J. (2009) Visible Learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement, Routledge