In this American Educational Research Journal article, Kristy Cooper (Michigan State University) says that student engagement (versus boredom) is a key correlate of success in high school, and some teachers are much more successful at engaging their students than others. However, the research so far haven’t given us a clear idea of how to increase engagement across a school. Cooper believes there are three types of student engagement, each ranging from high to low:
- Behavioral – the extent to which a student listens, does assignments, follows directions, participates;
- Cognitive – the extent to which a student applies mental energy, thinks about the content, tries to figure out new material, and grapples with mental challenges;
- Emotional – the extent to which a student enjoys a class, feels comfortable and interested, and wants to do well.
These three dimensions interact in a synergistic way, but the emotional dimension may be the most important, driving the other two. This is because it’s all tied up with adolescents’ identity development – “the process of integrating successes, failures, routines, habits, rituals, novelties, thrills, threats, violations, gratifications, frustrations into a coherent and evolving interpretation of who we are” (Nakkula, 2003). Identity development, says Cooper, “could be an underlying mechanism by which adolescents subconsciously make meaning of classroom experiences and then engage or disengage accordingly.”
Drawing on extensive surveys and interviews in a diverse high school, Cooper examined three classroom approaches to getting students engaged, to see which worked best:
• Connective instruction – Making personal connections to the subject matter through six teaching practices: helping students see the relevance of academic content to their lives, cultures, and futures; conveying caring for students at an academic, social, and personal level; demonstrating understanding of students; providing affirmation through praise, written feedback, and opportunities for success; using humor; and enabling self-expression by having students share ideas, opinions, and values with others.
• Academic rigor – Emphasizing the academics of a class via three teaching practices: providing challenging work; “academic press” (emphasis on hard work and academic success); and conveying passion for the content.
• Lively teaching – Replacing tedious lectures and low-involvement videos with three perkier teaching practices: using games and fun activities (such as academic Jeopardy and Family Feud); having students work in cooperative groups; and assigning hands-on projects.
What were Cooper’s findings? All twelve teaching practices were significantly correlated with student engagement and with one another, but some were much more effective than others. Connective instruction practices were seven times more effective at fostering student engagement than academic rigor and lively teaching, with lively teaching by itself coming in last. The key, Cooper believes, is tapping into students’ identity development: “Through emphasizing relational connections between students and their teachers, content, and learning experiences,” she says, “connective instruction practices appear to draw on students’ sense of self as a mechanism for engagement.”
Here are some of the details: Students’ perception that a teacher cared for them was the highest of all the teaching practices (r = .59); challenging work was the lowest (r = .19). The strongest correlation among teaching practices was for care and understanding (r = .76), while the lowest correlations were between challenging work and games and fun activities (r = .05) and group work (r = .11).
Connective teaching practices scored highest overall, but they don’t necessarily lead to high levels of engagement – and academic rigor and lively teaching don’t necessarily produce low engagement, as illustrated by five case studies of teachers in this high school:
- Mr. Knowles’s physics class – High connection, high academic rigor, high lively teaching practices – his engagement score was 1.16.
- Mr. Lifsky’s history class – High connections and academic rigor, low liveliness – his engagement score was 0.57.
- Ms. Warner’s physics class – High liveliness and lower connections and rigor – her engagement score was 0.56.
- Ms. Ingels’s biology class – High liveliness and academic rigor, low connections – her engagement score was 0.31.
- Coach Connor’s English class – High connections, low rigor and liveliness – his engagement score was 0.57.
Here are details from Mr. Knowles’s physics class, showing how the three dimensions interact. “In their surveys, students said Knowles was a personable, entertaining, and knowledgeable teacher who integrated frequent labs and group tasks into an easy-going class atmosphere in which students participated regularly and saw physics as being highly relevant to their lives,” says Cooper. “Although students reported high levels of all three types of practices, they spoke most enthusiastically about connective instruction and suggested an additive effect of having all three types of practices.”
Mr. Lifsky was not a lively teacher but compensated for it by through connections and academic rigor. A former high-school dropout who enlisted in the military, was injured, and got into teaching to provide a role model for students, he frequently shared his life story, and students believed he was there for them. He worked students very hard, lectured in traditional fashion, and assigned copious written work. Most students responded positively to his caring boot camp, buying into his pedagogy and giving him moderately high marks for engagement.
Coach Connors was a young, charismatic teacher/coach whom students loved, but one commented that they were doing “the same English stuff we’ve been learning since our freshman year.”
What are the implications of this study for high schools? Cooper believes principals, instructional coaches, and teachers should administer student perception surveys, focus on what students say is and isn’t engaging, and systematically develop the teaching practices that produce the most student engagement. “For example,” she says, “knowing that demonstrating care can help students to feel valued in ways that might foster emotional connection could motivate teachers to more conscientiously make gestures of care to students who appear alienated or uninvested.”
Stephen Anderson
