Student engagement occurs when "students make a psychological investment in learning. They try hard to learn what school offers. They take pride not simply in earning the formal indicators of success (grades and qualifications), but in understanding the material and incorporating or internalizing it in their lives."
Since the U.S. college dropout rate for first-time-in college degree-seeking students is nearly 50%, it is increasingly seen as an indicator of successful classroom instruction, and as a valued outcome of school reform. The phrase was identified in 1996 as "the latest buzzword in education circles." Students are engaged when they are involved in their work, persist despite challenges and obstacles, and take visible delight in accomplishing their work. Student engagement also refers to a "student's willingness, need, desire and compulsion to participate in, and be successful in, the learning process promoting higher level thinking for enduring understanding." Student engagement is also a usefully ambiguous term for the complexity of 'engagement' beyond the fragmented domains of cognition, behaviour, emotion or affect, and in doing so encompass the historically situated individual within their contextual variables (such as personal and familial circumstances) that at every moment influence how engaged an individual (or group) is in their learning.
Definitions
Student engagement is frequently used to, "depict students' willingness to participate in routine school activities, such as attending class, submitting required work, and following teachers' directions in class." However, the term is also increasingly used to describe meaningful student involvement throughout the learning environment, including students participating in curriculum design, classroom management and school building climate. It is also often used to refer as much to student involvement in extra-curricular activities in the campus life of a school/college/university which are thought to have educational benefits as it is to student focus on their curricular studies.
In a number of studies student engagement has been identified as a desirable trait in schools; however, there is little consensus among students and educators as to how to define it. Often, student engagement is defined according to one of the most popular measures of student engagement – the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). Other studies have shown that student engagement overlaps with, but is not the same as, student motivation. Because of the lack of consensus on what student engagement is (and what it is not), researchers have begun to offer suggestions for moving the educational literature towards a unified conceptualization of student engagement. These researchers generally adopt a combination of psychological and socio-cultural perspectives to represent student engagement as three dimensions including affect, behavior, and cognition. Using these perspectives, some researchers have further borrowed from work psychology research to suggest that the 'engaged' part of student engagement means that student harness themselves to their role, and thus show a high level of activation or energy.
Student engagement is used to discuss students' attitudes towards school, while student disengagement identifies withdrawing from school in any significant way.
Requirements
Student engagement requires that teachers actively seek to create the conditions that foster this reaction. The first step to whole-school improvement in the area of student engagement is for the entire building faculty to share a definition of student engagement. Other steps include clear articulation of learning criteria with clear, immediate, and constructive feedback; show students the skills they need to be successful are within their grasp by clearly and systematically demonstrating these skills, and; demonstrate engagement in learning as a valuable aspect of their personalities.
Relationships between students and adults in schools, and among students themselves, are a critical factor of student engagement. This is especially true among students considered to be at-risk and without other positive adult interaction. There are several strategies for developing these relationships, including acknowledging student voice, increasing intergenerational equity and sustaining youth-adult partnerships throughout the learning environment. There have been multiple formats identified for this type of engagement.
The National Survey of Student Engagement identifies dozens of everyday indicators of student engagement throughout colleges and universities.