Winning the People: What Engagement Really Means
Jace is not a huge fan of his English class, but he has been careful not to let his true feelings show. Every day, he places himself in the front row, smiles pleasantly at Ms. Gibbs, his teacher, and settles in for class. He knows what is about to happen, since it happens every day. Ms. Gibbs will lecture for the next 45 minutes, pausing from time to time to let students engage in what she calls a “discussion.” By her definition, this consists of firing a multitude of questions about the reading homework at students and waiting for answers. When students produce the responses she considers ideal, Ms. Gibbs smiles and seems happy with the class. When they cannot provide the results she wants, Ms. Gibbs halts the “discussion” and lectures even more.
Either way, Jace has developed an effective coping mechanism for ensuring that Ms. Gibbs leaves him well enough alone. As his teacher talks, he devotes his energy to nodding emphatically and smiling, particularly when she looks at him. Jace is an expert at reading both body language and visual cues, and he manages to convince most of his teachers that he harbors considerable enthusiasm for school without ever needing to say much at all. This strategy comes in particularly helpful on days like this one, when Jace comes to school after getting home late from practice the night before or spends too long gaming with his friends to get any homework done. Every now and then his unlucky day comes and Ms. Gibbs calls on him, but Jace can usually get by with either rephrasing something she just said or by hedging with a vague reply.
Many teachers have progressed far past the model that Ms. Gibbs emulates by applying effective strategies for uncovering student thinking and promoting engagement. The question is, how is it possible to know that students are truly engaged in what they learn, and are not putting on a superficial show?
Just as having a camera switched to the “on” position during Zoom learning in the height of the pandemic did not necessarily indicate student engagement, physical presence in the classroom is also not a sign of anything beyond attendance. In 2004, education researchers Jennifer Fredricks et al labeled the lowest observable type of student engagement as “behavioral.” Simply put, behavioral engagement is built on outward signs of compliance with classroom processes. Students in this category are attentive, appear to be focused on relevant tasks, and even participate in order to keep apprised of what is happening. Perhaps we can’t expect much more than that?
Except…not really. Fredricks et al share two additional and higher levels of engagement: cognitive and affective. With cognitive engagement, students enjoy the experience of academic challenge and want to gain a deeper understanding of what they learn. With affective engagement, they go one step further and emotionally connect to their learning with feelings like belonging, joy, and curiosity. While both groups of students who meet these descriptors are more likely to be higher-performing and get more out of their school experiences, the latter group possesses an innate value for knowledge over rewards systems that will likely serve them far past their years of schooling as they embrace the concept of lifelong learning.
How do we move students from that lowest level of behavioral engagement into something far more meaningful? In Teach More, Hover Less, I lean heavily into the notion that to “win the people,” we must include them in every stage of instruction, including what occurs before anyone sets foot in a classroom. How is it possible to engage students even before they learn something?
The answer lies in the third stage of what I call “hover-free” teaching, which is how teachers plan for engagement. With this approach, we gather information from students about what they will be learning prior to a unit of study by tapping into not just prior knowledge, but also by exploring what has worked in the past—and what has not.
Three specific strategies below (shared with more detail in the book) exemplify how teachers can achieve the goal of increasing shared responsibility for planning lessons that leads to engagement, moving students beyond behavioral and into both cognitive and affective levels of involvement.
Strategy #1: Dynamic Planning Guide
Before bringing students into the learning process, it is important to have a crystal-clear understanding of what successful outcomes look like and how to measure them while also considering the how of a model that includes true engagement. To plan for lessons that have some agility in their potential response to how students receive them, think about questions like this:
What about this lesson requires teacher direction? What can students manage without help?
How can students exercise choice in this process?
When individual students do not meet learning goals, what are some questions I could ask them to help determine where the issues might lie?
While it may not be possible to predict how any given class period will go with total accuracy, thinking about possible hiccups in advance keeps learning in a dynamic space rather than a stagnant one. Furthermore, as students see teachers adjusting instruction to meet their needs, they will be more likely to involve themselves more fully in what is happening around them and engage in lessons with far more enthusiasm.
Strategy #2: Shared Planning Tool
Teachers usually agree that it is ideal to plan collaboratively rather than alone. However, the option of bringing students into lesson planning is rarely considered. After all, many will argue, with a degree of justification, what do kids know about instruction? Isn’t it the teacher’s job to know what to teach, and how that should happen?
Well, yes. Still, students can provide a wealth of invaluable information. The job of the teacher is not in question; we are experts in both content and pedagogy, and that cannot be replaced with student voice. Thinking less about the what of instruction and more about the how, imagine what teachers can learn by simply asking students to answer a few questions prior to fully planning a unit of study:
What do I already know about this learning goal?
What has helped me in the past, and what was not as helpful?
How do I usually know when I have learned something (when I “get it”)?
When teachers read and reflect on student responses to questions like the ones above, this information can guide next steps. Suppose students share that they feel that too many classes are structured with small group work. The teacher can adjust planning to include a wider range of interactions. On a more individual level, if a student shares that she gets nervous answering questions in front of the class, the teacher could create more options for student response, such as sharing ideas in a written medium (like an online document) or in paired groupings.
Regardless of the specifics, a successful outcome to incorporating student voice into planning is dependent upon transparency. If teachers do not explicitly tell students what changes are being made to lessons as a result of their feedback and why, the degree of cognitive or affective engagement in the classroom will likely not go up as much as it can when students believe that teachers care about what they think.
Strategy #3: You-Do-You Calendar
Whenever the topic of providing students with additional choice arises, naysayers like to argue that it is too much work to plan a class in which kids have additional decision-making capacity. However, this all-or-nothing dismissal of a worthwhile strategy is oversimplified and limited. Giving students options for their learning is not something teachers may wish to do every day, but it can be incorporated into how instruction is planned anywhere from once to twice per week.
© 2022 by Miriam Plotinsky. From the book Teach More, Hover Less: How to Stop Micromanaging Your Secondary Classroom. Used with permission of the publisher.
To exemplify what this model looks like, the “You-Do-You” calendar shared in the third chapter of Teach More, Hover Less provides a planning framework that includes student choice. The goal is for all students to wind up in the same place at the end of the week with their completion of assignments that measure learning outcomes; however, they have a degree of preference in terms of how they get there. On certain days, for example, one student might opt to work on a project due later in the week while another focuses on reading an assigned text. Just as adults have proclivities in how they approach work each day, kids need to be given the opportunity to learn how they are most productive. When that happens, they access a deeper level of engagement, which, in turn, leads them to more meaningful experiences and growth.
The journey to empowering profound student engagement moves beyond the clear benefit of building a classroom culture of shared responsibility, though that is a goal that is well worth achieving on its own. In addition to allowing teachers to more easily engage in the backward design process that keeps student learning at the forefront, the focus on grades and extrinsic rewards fade into the background as the priority—meaningful content acquisition—becomes a far more visible focus of the academic space.
At one point or another, every teacher has had at least one student like Jace, someone who sits near the front nodding and smiling while hoping that nobody notices that their interest exists only at the shallowest level. To change this narrative, students must be empowered to claim responsibility for what they learn from adults who affirm their validity as learners on a regular basis. That way, we move from the appearance of engagement to something far more lasting, giving students academic skills that will follow them far beyond their years of schooling and into lives that are filled with meaning.
Miriam Plotinsky is a learning and achievement specialist with Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland, where she has worked for nearly 20 years as an English teacher, staff developer, and department chair. She is a National Board–certified teacher with additional certification in education administration and supervision. In addition to her work as a specialist, she is a freelance education writer who can be found on Twitter @MirPloMCPS.
