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F I V E PAT H S O F S T U D E N T E N G AG E M E N T
The Missing Link There is a missing link in explanations of engagement and disengagement, and of what’s responsible for them. This missing link is the social side of student engagement. This neglect has led to strategies that are insufficient for the scale of the problem. Research on student engagement has been dominated by the discipline of psychology— and especially by what is known as positive psychology. This has promoted individual and small-scale solutions to what are often social and systemic problems of disengagement. We review key psychological perspectives in this book because they help us understand the interpersonal dynamics of motivation and engagement. They cover the cognitive, behavioral, and emotional factors that bring about greater or lesser engagement in our classrooms and our schools. The strength of positive psychology is that it suggests practical approaches and strategies that teachers and schools can use immediately. These include things like boosting intrinsic motivation, providing positive feedback, and creating experiences of flow in students’ learning. The limitation of positive psychology, though, is that it only examines the small-scale factors in individual classrooms and schools that can be manipulated to secure improvement. The problem with the prevailing influence of psychological perspectives is not that they are wrong. They are just not enough. There is no shortage of well-known, psychologically informed strategies that, in principle, any teacher can use to enhance their students’ engagement—from adopting growth mindsets, to introducing interdisciplinary projects, to using formative assessments, for example. The evidence base has increased, the books are numerous, and the professional development has been plentiful. Yet, overall, engagement levels don’t seem to be getting better. So, what’s the problem? Are teachers simply reluctant to take risks and try new practices that the evidence suggests work well? Or is something else getting in the way? The distinctive contribution of this book is that it comes to terms with what is obstructing optimum engagement, and with what needs to be done as a result. To do this, we develop a complementary
