Student Engagement: What do we know and what should we do?

for self-directed, deep learning. The National Research Council’s statement below
includes all previous purposes for increasing student engagement – achievement,
belonging, equity – but also points to the “new” purpose: to enhance all “students’
motivation to learn. It hints at what was yet to come – the subtle request for a
relinquishing of control over curricular content, or more accurately, to allow students to
choose the process and sometimes topics of learning as a way to keep students engaged in
their learning.
The 2004 National Research Council report on fostering high school
students’ motivation to learn argued that motivation is a key factor in the
success or failure of education and that “by the time many students enter
high school, disengagement from course work and serious study is
common.” The consequences of this disengagement are often much more
serious for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds because they do
not usually get a second chance; students from more privileged backgrounds
frequently do. The primary ingredients that foster involvement and
motivation to learn are “competence and control, beliefs about the value of
education, and a sense of belonging” (National Research Council, 2004, p.
ix) as cited in Ramaley & Zia, 2005, p. 8.2 (italics are added for emphasis)
In the literature from 2005 onward, questions arose that challenged the effectiveness of
prior pedagogy and curriculum in adequately preparing our youth for their careers and
lives. The term “Knowledge Society” or “Information Age” became popular and
educators no longer assumed the modernist values of an Industrial Age; instead, they
moved towards a new world and a new way of being. Obviously, this movement was
encouraged by a massive groundswell of accessible technology and information, which
allowed further opportunities to revise learning and education accordingly. As Gilbert
(2007) says, the new definition of knowledge differs “from traditional philosophical
understandings of knowledge, and because of this, it is a major challenge to our education
systems. We cannot address this challenge by adding new ideas to – or tinkering with –
existing structures. To address it we need to think differently about schools. We need to
go ‘back to basics,’ to re-think many of our current ideas about schools, their purposes,
and the best ways of achieving those purposes” (Gilbert, 2007, p. 4).
Inherent in this discussion is the additional shift in locus of control over learning – from
teacher controlled to student controlled. Authors such as Gilbert (2007) and Bopry &
Hedberg (2005) asked if our applications of engagement models, as the word engagement
implies, really allowed students to gain “competence” and a sense of “control” over their
own learning? Were they empowered and supported to become more committed to, in
love with, and willing to persevere through the challenges of learning for learning’s sake?
Were students able to critique and create their own knowledge? Did their learning
climates and environments support the growth of their innate interest in learning? Or
were we just tweaking an old system without actually relinquishing the control and locus
of power to the learner?
Student Engagement: What do we know and what should we do? 13