Defining Student Engagement

Defining Student Engagement

In November our staff participated in a professional development targeted to provide some much needed time for reflection and thought about our work and daily practices.  One topic I was very interested in discussing with teachers was what they “look for” when it comes to student engagement. I would argue that educators can spend all the time in the world developing new standards and assessments but without strong student engagement, students will never get where we want them to go.

In my view, developing a school wide definition of student engagement can serve us in many ways.  Students can reference the definition to help understand the expectations teachers have for their involvement in their own education.  Teachers can use the definition to remind themselves to be creative in their planning and to make sure our instructional practices are student-centered.  Administrators can use the shared definition as a starting point to initiate meaningful conversations with our wonderful teachers when we visit classrooms.

Some might say, why student engagement?  If you look at the current state of education we have new standards, new assessments and new expectations for our learners.  Everything is happening so fast and as we catch up in aligning our instruction to our standards, our assessments, our interventions and our class activities---I believe the biggest impact we can make with our students in the meantime is to engage them as much as possible in the learning process on a daily basis.  Every student! 

I remember my favorite teachers growing up thought outside the box.  We had presentations, group work, projects and the overall classes were collaborative and required me to get out of my chair and apply what I have learned! Those teachers impacted my understanding of the material and I remember many of the lessons to this day. Colleges and universities want to have independent thinking problem solvers who also have a grasp of the content.  Interestingly enough, so do employers!  So let’s use a definition as a starting point to guide our instructional practices in this ever changing world of education! 

Reno High School 

Student engagement means all students are actively thinking, speaking or writingabout relevant topics associated with the learning objective or essential question of the day. In general, the teacher facilitates the learning collaboratively while students do the heavy lifting required to meet or exceed standard.