Defining Learner Engagement

As mentioned above, learner engagement has been identified as an important precursor to learning and academic achievement. However, it has proved to be a slippery concept when it comes to definitions (Chapman, 2003; Parsons & Taylor, 2011). Reeve (2012) borrows from Wellborn (1991) to describe engagement as, “the extent of a student’s active involvement in a learning activity” (p. 150). While the term “student engagement” is most prevalent in

published research, I use “learner engagement” as a broader term that includes all learning contexts (including my own), not necessarily primary and secondary school settings.

Several authors have lamented on the confusion caused by the lack of agreement in defining engagement. Roger Azevedo (2015) offers the following:

Engagement has been used to describe everything including student academic performance and achievement; classroom behaviors; approaches to interacting with instructional materials; students’ self-perceptions of beliefs in handling individual and contextual aspects of learning situations; students’ enactment of cognitive, motivational, affective, metacognitive, and social processes,

particularly in academic contexts (e.g., classrooms, intelligent tutoring systems); teacher practices in learner-centered classrooms; and features of instructional and learning contexts designed to initiate, sustain, and foster learning. (p. 84)

For the purpose of my study, I will stick closer to the “students’ enactment of cognitive, motivational, affective, metacognitive, and social processes, particularly in

academic contexts” mentioned in this rather long quote. Hu and Kuh (2002) view engagement as “the quality of effort students themselves devote to educationally purposeful activities that contribute directly to desired outcomes” (p. 555), while Philp and Duchesne (2016) have a much broader conceptualization, describing engagement as “a state of heightened attention and involvement, in which participation is reflected not only in the cognitive dimension, but in social, behavioural and affective dimensions” (p. 3). This broader view of engagement is also evident in a report by Dunleavy and Milton (2009), who conceptualized engagement as including the holy trinity of behavioral, emotional and cognitive engagement within a wider framework of academic and social engagement (Fig. 3.2).

Figure 3.2 Definitions of student engagement (Dunleavy & Milton, 2009, p. 7)

As this is an exploratory study of how engagement is experienced in a specific context, I have chosen to focus my analysis on the core dimensions or types of engagement in the center of this model, but will also attempt to address the topics of social engagement,

academic engagement and agentic engagement (Reeve, 2012) in chapters five (Findings and Discussion) and six (Conclusions, Considerations and Implications).

In her review of how engagement has been operationalized, Chapman (2003) notes three early trends. First was the common measure of time on task. Another was to focus on willingness on the part of students to participate in routine school activities (e.g. attendance, submission of homework, following directions). Finally, there was an orientation toward cognitive, behavioural and affective indicators of engagement with learning tasks. Skinner and Belmont (1993) conceptualized engagement in school as the opposite of disaffection, and described it as the “intensity and emotional quality” of a person’s involvement in initiating and carrying out learning activities. They see engaged children as displaying “sustained behavioral involvement” in learning activities, and view this involvement as accompanied by a “positive emotional tone” (p. 572). In contrast, disaffected children are:

passive, do not try hard, and give up easily in the face of challenges… [they can] be bored, depressed, anxious, or even angry about their presence in the classroom; they can be withdrawn from learning opportunities or even rebellious towards teachers and classmates. (p. 572)

This description fits with models of engagement mentioned earlier (Connell, 1990; Connell & Wellborn, 1991) that conceputalize engagement and disengagement or disaffection as opposite ends of a continuum. Another way of operationalizing learner engagement was proposed by Coates (2006), whose statistical modeling using Student Engagement

Questionnaire (SEQ) data from 1,051 full-time university students from four universities in the U.S. identified clear distinctions between academic and social dimensions (Fig. 3.3).

Figure 3.3 Typology model of student engagement styles (Coates, 2006)

The author theorized that these dimensions held for both face-to-face and online contexts, and that student engagement could be characterised as either intense, collaborative, independent or passive. This model struck me as relevant in that classroom experiences have shown me that students can be socially and academically engaged in different degrees, and the categories described somewhat fit the profile of current and past learners in my classes and those depicted in Fushino (2010), Harumi (2011), Tanaka (2010), and Yonesaka and Tanaka (2013).

Finally, Yazzie-Mintz and McCormick (2012) informally polled teachers and other stakeholders about their understanding of student engagement, and concluded that the complexities and range of understandings make finding a commonly accepted definition for the concept difficult to arrive at. They concluded that the question of how to measure student engagement is still “up for debate” and that the present picture of engagement lends itself better to “identification by observation” (p. 745), i.e. knowing it when we see it.

The last part of this quote resonated with me in that my time and experience in the classroom has equipped me with the ability to recognize engagement (or disengagement)

from. For now, my working definition of engagement is “outward signs that a learner is actively involved (behaviorly, cogntively and/or emotionally) in a target-language endeavor.” I want to focus in this definition on both the action and the endeavor. The action can be physical, mental or emotive, while the endeavor can be learning, practicing or experimenting with the target language. Together, the definitions and frameworks of engagement mentioned so far provide me with a list of important considerations for structuring my study.

Specifically, this literature review has convinced me that a focus on how engagement is “experienced” is a worthy pursuit, that the participation-identification model (Finn, 1989) can be updated as an identity-investment model (discussed further in the next chapter), that the core dimensions of engagement (section 3.3.2) provide a sufficient starting point for my investigation–but that academic and social engagement deserve attention, and that I need to look at both engagement and disengagement/dissafection.