Student Engagement Framework Research Articles

Student Engagement: Body, Mind and Heart – A Proposal for an Embedded Multi-Dimensional Student Engagement Framework

This paper considers student engagement in the context of a diverse higher education population and explores what institutions can do to impact positively on student engagement. The paper takes as its starting point the goals of higher education and the purposes of student engagement and reflects on the politicisation of student engagement, and the relative positioning of the student and the higher education institution in relation to student engagement. The paper suggests conditions for and dimensions of student engagement, and identifies how opportunities for student engagement may be embedded through the curriculum and through learning and teaching. An innovative and original pragmatic framework exploring academic, emotional and transactional dimensions of student engagement that can be used by higher education institutions to implement holistic, targeted engagement strategies is presented.

Enabling exemplary teaching: a framework of student engagement for students from low socio-economic backgrounds with implications for technology and literacy practices

Engaging students in effective technology use and literacy learning is an ongoing challenge, particularly for students who are impacted by poverty. Exemplary teaching and teachers’ pedagogical choices play a critical role in addressing this challenge. This paper illustrates the practices of teachers, identified to be exemplary in engaging students in low socio-economic status (SES) locations, with a focus on their use of technology and associated literacy practices. The data is drawn from a large-scale study of the practices of 28 exemplary teachers in low SES primary and secondary schools in New South Wales, Australia. Using the Fair Go student engagement framework, we illustrate the ways these teachers used high cognitive, high affective and high operative strategies with technology to build students’ discipline and literacy knowledge, to scaffold their learning and to create a nurturing environment for literacy learning. Technology-literacy markers are presented as a pedagogical guide that draws on exemplary practice by teachers in a range of low SES settings. The analysis presented also provides forward-thinking input to governments and policymakers for re-conceptualizing educational technology for students in these contexts.

Linking academic emotions and student engagement: mature-aged distance students’ transition to university

Research into both student engagement and student emotions is increasing, with widespread agreement that both are critical determinants of student success in higher education. Less researched are the complex, reciprocal relationships between these important influences. Two theoretical frameworks inform this paper: Pekrun’s taxonomy of academic emotions and Kahu’s conceptual framework of student engagement. The prospective qualitative design aims to allow a rich understanding of the fluctuating and diverse emotions that students experience during the transition to university and to explore the relationships between academic emotions and student engagement. The study follows 19 mature-aged (aged 24 and over) distance students throughout their first semester at university, using video diaries to collect data on their emotional experiences and their engagement with their study. Pre and post-semester interviews were also conducted. Findings highlight that different emotions have different links to engagement: as important elements in emotional engagement, as inhibitors of engagement and as outcomes that reciprocally influence engagement. There are two key conclusions. First, student emotions are the point of intersection between the university factors such as course design and student variables such as motivation and background. Second, the flow of influence between emotions, engagement, and learning is reciprocal and complex and can spiral upwards towards ideal engagement or downwards towards disengagement and withdrawal.

Student engagement research in higher education: questioning an academic orthodoxy

This article suggests that student engagement research is not often investigated critically. It attempts to change this. After briefly outlining a conceptual framework for student engagement, it explores three critical questions about it. First, it asks whether in trying to be all things in teaching and learning, student engagement focuses too much on an engaged generic learner that neglects the impact of specific contexts. Second, it asks whether engagement research, with its focus on identifying engaging classroom practices, has come to emphasise pedagogy at the expense of curriculum, which is a more philosophical and political understanding of purposes, knowledge and values in higher education. It asks, third, whether student engagement has gained its high profile because it aligns with and supports a neoliberal ideology that has an instrumental view of knowledge and emphasises performativity and accountability.

Reexamining Gifted Underachievement and Dropout Through the Lens of Student Engagement

The issue of high school dropout has long concerned policy makers, educational professionals, and the general public. In the gifted literature, this concern is no less pressing. Student engagement is becoming an increasingly discussed construct for conceptualizing the dropout phenomenon and designing appropriate interventions to prevent this phenomenon. The purpose of this literature review was to review prior findings in the gifted underachievement and dropout literature within the framework of student engagement. Specifically, academic, behavioral, affective, and cognitive indicators of student engagement are examined. Findings of the review and implications for research and practice are presented. Student engagement may prove to be an essential construct in understanding, predicting, and preventing dropout behavior among gifted students.

Re-Presenting the Library Collections : A Story of Principles, Pathways and Partnerships

Macquarie University Library’s planning for a new library coincided with a major renewal of the university’s curriculum and research activity. This provided a significant opportunity to re-think the presentation of the library collections in the new environment. This article describes how strategic alignment with university goals and the framework of student engagement informed the three major aspects of our approach: the development of collection storage principles, a focus on the presentation of disciplinary pathways to reflect current teaching and research, and the building of collection management and development partnerships with our academic colleagues.

An Innovative Strategy in Evaluation: Using a Student Engagement Framework to Evaluate a Role-Based Simulation

Online role-play has the potential to actively engage students in authentic learning experiences and help develop their clinical reasoning skills. However, evaluation of student learning for this kind of simulation focuses mainly on the content and outcome of learning, rather than on the process of learning through student engagement. This article reports on the use of a student engagement framework to evaluate an online role-play offered as part of a course in Bachelor of Nursing and Bachelor of Midwifery programs. Instruments that measure student engagement to date have targeted large numbers of students at program and institutional levels, rather than at the level of a specific learning activity. Although the framework produced some useful findings for evaluation purposes, further refinement of the questions is required to be certain that deep learning results from the engagement that occurs with course-level learning initiatives.

Social learning spaces and student engagement

Notable gains have been made in understanding the factors that influence the student experience in higher education, particularly in the area of student engagement. While tremendous effort has been focused on identifying educationally beneficial activities for students, we must also consider where these activities are occurring. In recent years there have been technological advances that have paved the way for blended learning environments, however, physical learning environments continue to dominate the functionality of many universities. The development of purpose‐built informal social learning spaces as a strategy to enhance the student experience is becoming more prevalent, although empirical research in this area is lacking. This study explores the role of social learning spaces on the student experience using the student engagement framework within a qualitative research design. Informal interviews with 103 students were conducted within a social learning space. Findings reveal that social learning spaces can contribute to enhanced student engagement by fostering active learning, social interaction and belonging amongst tertiary students. The study also suggests that design is a contributing factor to students' perceptions of social learning spaces.

Reflections from the riot zone: TheFair Go Projectand student engagement in a besieged community

This article describes and evaluates a pedagogical intervention aimed at improving student engagement in a very disadvantaged and low socio-economic status community in Australia. The intervention took place at a time of great community unrest and provides a contrast between wider public and media perceptions of poor communities and efforts at community renewal through education. A theoretical framework of student engagement developed in a research project into student engagement and students in poverty is introduced and then classroom changes that work within this framing are discussed. Finally, data showing results from the intervention are presented.