Student Engagement

Student Engagement
As presented by John Antonetti November 17, 2012 Carroll Knicely Center, Bowling Green, KY Working on the Work by Dr. Phillip Schlechty

Lesson Design Reflection Experimentation Analysis

Academic Engagement Identifying Similarities and Differences breaking a concept into similar and dissimilar characteristics provides opportunity to understand and solve challenging problems by analyzing them in a simple way Summarizing and Note-taking analyzing information to find what is essential and put it into one’s own words

Academic Engagement Nonlinguistic Representations Representing knowledge in a form other than words Generating and Testing Hypotheses Applying knowledge by asking “what if” questions and clearly explaining conclusions Advance Questions, Cues, and Organizers Using prior knowledge to anticipate and enhance further learning

Intellectual Engagement Synthesis Creating new ideas and information using what has been previously learned (by combining or substituting patterns, or ignoring expected patterns) Evaluation Making informed judgments about the value of ideas, materials, or situations (comparative or superlative) Analysis Breaking down an idea or concept into parts to examine relationships among the parts (by newly discovered patterns, traits, rules) Application Making use of information in a context different from the one in which it was learned (using patterns, traits, rules in a new situation)

Egocentric Engagement Personal Response Clear/Modeled Expectations Emotional/Intellectual Safety Learning from Others Sense of Audience Choice Novelty and Variety Authenticity

Personal Response – More than one right answer Work that engages students almost always focuses on a product or performance of significance to students. When studentsexplain their answers or the logic and reasoning behind those answers, they are invested in their personal response.

Personal Response

Clear/Modeled Expectations Student knows what success “looks like” Students prefer knowing exactly what is expected of them, and how those expectations relate to something they care about. Standards are only relevant when those to whom they apply care about them.

Clear/Modeled Expectations

Emotional/Intellectual Safety Freedom to take risks Students are more engaged when they can try tasks without fear of embarrassment, punishment, or implications that they’re inadequate. Personal response activities that students must support with logic, reasoning or explanation require more intellectual safety than answering a question that has only one right answer.

Emotional/Intellectual Safety

Learning with Others Sharing and comparing ideas with peers Students are more likely to be engaged by work that permits, encourages, and supports opportunities for them to work interdependently with others. Those who advocate cooperative learning understand this well, and also recognize the critical difference between students working together and students working independently on a common task, which may look like group work but isn’t. When ideas are shared and compared, then learning takes place.

Learning with Others

Sense of Audience Student work is shared Students are more highly motivated when their parents, teachers, fellow students and “significant others” make it known that they think the student’s work is important. Portfolio assessments, which collect student work for scrutiny by people other than the teacher, can play a significant role in making student work “more visible.”

Sense of Audience

Choice Students have meaningful options When students have some degree of control over what they are doing, they are more likely to feel committed to doing it. This doesn’t mean students should dictate school curriculum, however. Schools must distinguish between giving students choices in what they do and letting them choose what they will learn.

Choice

Novelty and Variety Learning experiences are unusual or unexpected Makes learning more fun not necessarily better Students are more likely to engage in the work asked of them if they are continually exposed to new and different ways of doing things. The use of technology in writing classes, for example, might motivate students who otherwise would not write. New technology and techniques, however, shouldn’t be used to create new ways to do the same old work. New forms of work and new products to produce are equally important.

Novelty and Variety

Authenticity Connections to experience or prior learning This term is bandied about quite a bit by educators, so much so that the power of the concept is sometimes lost. When students are given tasks that are meaningless, contrived, and inconsequential, they are less likely to take them seriously and be engaged by them.

Authenticity

Student Engagement