Teacher Behaviors Contributing to Student Content Engagement: A Socially Constructed Consensus of Undergraduate Students in a College of Agriculture

Abstract

Students in colleges of agriculture will face a dynamically changing workplace. In order to learn the skills needed to succeed in such an environment, students must be cognitively engaged in the college classroom. Engagement with instructional content is a precursor to learning, and teachers in colleges of agriculture must shift towards using more learner-centered, engaging instructional methods. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore college of agriculture students’ perspectives of specific teacher behaviors contributing to cognitive engagement. A focus group methodology was applied using the Student Content Engagement (SCE) framework to guide the interviews. The SCE framework consists of four constructs that must be in place for cognitive engagement to occur: subject matter content level, occasion for processing, physiological readiness, and motivation. Results of the study showed a multitude of teacher variables contributed to student content engagement and many of the findings were consistent with prior research about effective teaching. What is more, teacher immediacy was discovered as a consistent theme throughout all of the constructs. We concluded that teacher immediacy might be a construct for consideration in the SCE framework.