Major Meaning Perspectives in Mainstream Student Engagement A Quantitative Generic Pedagogical Perspective

This chapter digs more deeply into the multiple views about student engagement introduced in Chap. 1. Three different meaning perspectives are discussed: a quantitative generic pedagogical perspective; a cognitive learning focused perspective and a holistic lifewide experience perspective. Together, these perspectives provide a historical account of the development of student engagement. But this account focuses on theoretical developments and does not offer a clear view of possible practical differences between perspectives. To offer a more practice orientated overview of student engagement, the chapter identifies four practice frameworks derived from the three broad perspectives. The quantitative generic pedagogical perspective and the cognitive learning focused perspective are retained as separate practice frameworks. The holistic lifewide experience perspective divides into psychocultural and sociopolitical frameworks. Four variables —how learning agency and motivation are stimulated; what key learning and teaching processes are practised; how learner wellbeing is promoted; and how active citizenship is conceived—reveal differences between them. Student engagement may be a popular buzz phrase, but perhaps because of this popularity, it also suffers from conceptual complexity and uncertainty, even indigestion. Ramsden and Callender (2014, p. 28) bring this home with their description of student engagement as a convenient expression for almost any appealing form of teaching that encourages learning. They note that the following characteristics have all been noted in the research literature as leading to engagement. • A component of quality enhancement and assurance: engaging students more effectively in shaping their learning experiences; • The ‘student voice’; • Participating in activities that lead to learning and development gains; • Feeling a sense of belonging to (rather than disjunction from) an institution; • Learning with and from other students; • Learning on campus in a social community; © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017 N. Zepke, Student Engagement in Neoliberal Times, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-3200-4_2 21 • A sense of accomplishment from successful academic learning; • Adopting a deep approach to learning when undertaking academic tasks; • Self-efficacy in learning; intrinsic motivation; • Not being alienated through academic power and culture or market-driven changes to HE (especially non-traditional students); • “Engaging the whole person”; • Emotional attachment to learning deriving from good teaching, curriculum, assessment, resources and support; • ‘Student-centred’ education (teaching that focuses on students’ needs); • Involvement in learning, including time on task, participation in extracurricular activities, enjoyment and interest. This profusion of understandings makes a singular and definitive definition difficult to construct, and we may be better served by a more detailed examination of some of the diverse perspectives given to engagement in research and practice. The diversity of meaning and perspectives may be because conceptually student engagement has different roots in American and European (including the United Kingdom) traditions of researching learning and teaching. American researchers used the term student engagement early to research student learning behaviours. European researchers did not generally use the term until much later than the Americans. They preferred to focus on students’ approaches to, patterns of and intentions for learning. These two traditions of student engagement resulted in engagement research running along different lines. In Europe and United Kingdom the emphasis is more on understanding a student’s own sense of what learning is in a constructivist framework; the Americans view engagement more within a predetermined and generic pedagogical framework (Solomonides et al. 2012). However, this geographical distinction can be overstated. Engagement researchers have constructed quite diverse meanings of and perspectives on engagement across and within such geographic boundaries. For example, in higher education in the United States, the generic pedagogical conceptual framework was constructed around a quantitative research instrument that measures quantitatively student and institutional behaviours. But in the American school sector more holistic perspectives emerged that include cognitive and emotional attributes in addition to the behavioural ones favoured in the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). In Europe (including the United Kingdom) and Australia conceptual frameworks have been built around phenomenographic perspectives of student learning; building students’ sense of belonging; and providing space for student agency and voice. This chapter offers first a broad sketch of what I consider to be important meanings and perspectives on mainstream student engagement research. Second, it constructs a more detailed map of the various mainstream practice frameworks that have been developed and activated. 22 2 Mainstream Perspectives and Frameworks