Clarifying the concept of student of engagement: A

fruitful approach to underpin policy and practice

Colin Bryson*

Paper presented at the HEA Conference, Nottingham University, 5-6th July 2011

This is a working paper so please seek the lead *author’s permission before quoting

* Colin BrysonDirector of the Combined Honours CentreNewcastle UniversityNewcastle United KingdomNE1 7RU

Colin.bryson@ncl.ac.uk

IntroductionThe purpose of this paper is to seek clarity about concepts of student engagement (SE) and to seek to map conceptually what SE is. This draft draws from a constructive discussion to reach broad agreement on this issue. A network of those interested in SE has been established in the UK and also includes colleagues based abroad. This is RAISE (Researching, Advancing and Inspiring Student Engagement). A key goal of this group is to reach a shared understanding of the nature and meaning of SE. The process of drafting draws on the inaugural meeting of the group in May, 2010 and will be refined by further consultation of all members (currently 80 colleagues from around the world) as well as other interested parties. This process is intended to refine this conceptual map and to agree a set of principles about fruitful ways of fostering SE which may be used to underpin policy development and enhancement of practice.

SE is very topical currently. Not only is engagement the focus of much recent research and has been the theme of many conferences, SE also features as an important objective in the strategies of many Higher Education bodies at a number of levels such as course, faculty, institutional and national. It is now indubitable that student engagement really matters and it has been shown to be interlinked fundamentally with student retention and persistence, ‘good’ learning outcomes, achievement and academic success, and developing graduateness (Trowler, 2010).

In the UK, the concept of student engagement is relatively underdeveloped in conceptual and research terms. Therefore the term is frequently used, but infrequently defined or explored. The authors have been researching SE for some years and initially developed their own conception of SE from an inductive base underpinned by empirical research listening to the student voice. We have found that many studies which hardly mention the term of SE, if at all, have quite informed this topic! Therefore the criteria for inclusion of sources of evidence here is not because the research was specifically about engagement or was based on so-called ‘robust’ studies with huge quantitative datasets but because the research and conclusions drawn make an important contribution to this debate. Given the nature of SE we have found that qualitative studies have been particularly useful at uncovering its complex nature and contributing the most insightful ideas.

We present as a starting point, a description of the nature of engagement that has emerged from our own research (Bryson and Hand 2007a, 2007b; Bryson et al, 2009; Bryson, 2010). We are currently concluding a longitudinal project where we have gathered rich accounts from students through a discourse with these individuals (via regular interviews) throughout the three or four years of their undergraduate degrees. We have argued that SE is a holistic and socially constructed concept. Engagement encompasses the perceptions, expectations and experience of being a student and the construction of being a student in HE, a rather broader notion than student motivation, commitment to study or orientation to learning.

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Engagement is both a pre-requisite for learning to occur and a binding agent that allows learning to keep occurring. This is predicated on a notion of Higher Education offering the opportunity of “becoming not having” (Fromm, 1978) and that the perceptions and thinking of students will be changed through a process of transformative learning in an enabling, empowering and positive way.

There is a much longer tradition of research and commentary on SE in other settings than the UK. Indeed the great bulk of this work on SE in Higher Education has been undertaken in the United States but also with a strong contribution made by colleagues in Australia and New Zealand. There has also been a strong focus on SE in school age pupils which we need to include, at least in part. Therefore we shall present some conceptions from these areas followed by other contributions which inform the topic.

Differing paradigms of engagement

Dominant paradigms in AmericaThe roots of SE research in North America lie in the many studies on the ‘whole college experience’ of students. Becker (1961) pioneered this work, and Feldman and Newcomb (1969) produced the first studies on ‘college impact’ on students. This was followed by Pace (1982) who argued that it was the quality and quantity of student effort that led to good academic outcomes. This included investment by the students in both curricular and co-curricular activity. Astin (1984) refined this through a theory of student involvement where he proposed that more involvement resulted in better learning and development – thus institutions and staff should focus on the inducing of motivation and ‘virtuous’ behaviours in the student. The metastudies of Pascarella and Terenzini (1991, 2005) support this notion of the extent to which students engage being the determinant of their success at college and emphasise that this is holistic. Therefore it is engagement across the piece by the individual that matters because it is mutually reinforcing. This is a powerful message to staff and management about ensuring that what they do to shape the whole experience of students in classroom and beyond is aligned to this objective. The breadth of this is distilled by Chickering and Gamson (1987) into seven principles to be adopted by staff to:

Ensure student-staff contact Promote active learning Develop cooperation and mutuality between students Emphasise time on task Give prompt feedback Communicate high expectations Respect diversity in talent and ways of learning

Indeed it was Astin (1991) who went on to develop the first holistic model of SE: Input-Environment- Outcomes (I-E-O). The Input part is what the students brings – how they have

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been shaped by their pre-college experience. He identified 146 possible variables that might influence this. He then noted another 192 environmental variables (social, cultural, special, practical, educational, behavioural inter alia) that might influence how the college experience would impact on students. The outcomes component related to the changes on the student from these impacts – development, success, satisfaction, persistence. This final component had slightly less variables – a mere 82!

Based on some of these ideas and principles, Kuh developed in 1998 a survey instrument to measure engagement which has had the most profound impact – the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). This has been adopted in over 1300 colleges in the USA and Canada with several million student now having completed it. It is intended to offer something rather useful to institutional management – a proxy for quality and performance indicators (Kuh et al, 2008).

The National Survey of Student Engagement is designed to query undergraduates directly about their educational experiences. An extensive research literature relates particular classroom activities and specific faculty and peer practices to high-quality undergraduate student outcomes. For example, we know that level of challenge and time on task are positively related to persistence and subsequent success in college. Another conclusion of this body of research is that the degree to which students are engaged in their studies impacts directly on the quality of student learning and their overall educational experience. As such, characteristics of student engagement can serve as a proxy for quality.

[http://nsse.iub.edu/index.cfm]

Well over one hundred papers have now been published on analysis of sets and sub-sets of results from ten annual iterations of the application of the survey in all these settings. Therefore Kuh’s definition of engagement has gained a dominant position not just in North America but has also spread to Australia and New Zealand (with the AUSSE) and more recently South Africa (the SASSE) and China. Kuh emphases it is what the students do that matters:

Student engagement is defined as students’ involvement in activities and conditions that are linked with high-quality learning. A key assumption is that learning outcomes are influenced by how an individual participates in educationally purposeful activities. While students are seen to be responsible for constructing their own knowledge, learning is also seen to depend on institutions and staff generating conditions that stimulate student involvement.

Therefore the survey is designed to seek manifestations (and to some extent, outcomes) of students doing “educationally purposeful activities” (these are widely defined to capture the ‘whole college experience’) whilst at the same time measuring how often or how much students take up opportunities offered to do this. The survey seeks to address five benchmarks, all considered to be key components which encourage student engagement, these are:

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Level of academic challenge – extent to which expectations and assessments challenge students to learn. This includes: class preparation time; working hard; amount of reading and writing assigned; coursework that emphasises analysis, synthesis, making judgements about course materials, and applying theories and concepts to practical problems or new situations.

Enriching educational experiences – participating in broadening educational activities. These include: talking with students from different backgrounds, political beliefs or religious commitments; using electronic technology to discuss or complete assignments; and participating in work experience, community service, study abroad, and studying a foreign language

Active and collaborative Learning – students’ efforts to actively construct their knowledge. This includes: asking questions in class and contributing to class discussion; making presentations; working with other students on projects during and outside of class; tutoring or teaching other students; and discussing ideas from reading outside class

Supportive campus environment – feeling of being legitimatised within the community. This includes: satisfaction with academic and non-academic support, and quality of relationships with other students, faculty members and administrative personnel and offices

Student-Faculty interaction – level and nature of students’ contact with teaching staff. This includes: discussing grades and assignments with lecturers; talking about career plans with lecturers; discussing ideas from class with lecturers; receiving prompt feedback on performance; and working with a faculty member on a research project.

The application and analysis of the NSSE has been very powerful in demonstrating that higher levels of student engagement are associated with all sorts of virtuous educational, and other, outcomes. In addition it provides strong evidence to address organisational defects and to develop better educational strategies and policies. For example, Kuh (2008) has been able to identify ten types of activity such as engaging in collaborative projects, undergraduate led research or peer assisted learning which are strongly associated with high engagement.

However does this rather narrowly behaviourist conception provide a full and complete understanding of the concept student engagement? Let us return to that question later.

SE in Australia The origins of the focus on SE in Australia lie in large scale surveys carried out on first year students (the FYE) undertaken every five years since 1994. Although it should be noted that Williams (1982) preceded this with an index of ‘Institutional Belongingness, Social Involvement and Alienation’. From the data gathered by the 1994, McInnis and James (1995) developed the concept of ‘connectedness’ as being important for retention and persistence. McInnis, (2001) subsequently refined this into ‘negotiated’ engagement giving

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salience to the interactive and dynamic nature of SE. McInnis (2005) has since argued that good engagement manifests itself when students:

share the values and approaches to learning of their lecturers (academic orientation) spend sufficient time and energy on educationally meaningful tasks learn with others inside and outside the classroom actively explore ideas confidently with other people learn to value perspectives other than their own

McInnis (2001) has particularly emphasised the salience of the transition into higher education – the first year experience – in establishing good levels of engagement. He notes that there are more challenges to engagement; from student diversity and mobility, the changing nature of student courses, more and wider student choice such as e-learning and distance learning options, as well the decreased centrality of campus life to students who work or have families, which makes integration more difficult. Horstmanoff and Zimitat (2003) discuss how such major changes have affected the construction of student identities, where the ‘student self’ has to compete with other selves, but note that does not necessitate lower engagement.

Kerri-Lee Kraus took over responsibility for the FYE in 2004 when the survey was redesigned to include more items to assess specific ‘dimensions’ of SE. She defined SE as (Krause, 2005:3):

The time, energy and resources students devote to the activities designed to enhance learning at university.

Nearly contemporaneously Coates (2006) undertook a study on SE drawing on a quantitative and positivist paradigm. In a later paper Coates (2007) proposed a 2X2 typology of student engagement styles with an two axes – social and academic. He did note these were not fixed but likely to be transient.

Collaborativefocus on peers and social

Intensefocussed on study, close integration with staff

PassiveNon-participative in either sphere

Independentfocussed on study, but little integration with peers

Coates provided this definition of SE (2005:26):

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Social

Academic

The concept of student engagement is based on the constructivist assumption that learning is influenced by how an individual participates in educationally purposeful activities. Learning is seen as a ‘joint proposition’…, however, which also depends on institutions and staff providing students with the conditions, opportunities and expectations to become involved. However, individual learners are ultimately the agents in discussions of engagement.

Coates rapidly became the leading Australian proponent of the NSSE inspired approach to SE and developed the AUSSE which was adopted by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER). Thus it has become a national mechanism for quality assurance and enhancement. The AUSSE questionnaire is almost identical to the NSSE and was used for the first time in 2007 with 25 HEIs in Australia and New Zealand with first year and later year students. However in addition to the NSSE scales, a sixth, work integrated learning, has been developed specifically for the AUSSE. It measures the integration of employment-focussed work experiences into study. This includes blended academic learning with workplace experience, improved knowledge and skills that contribute to employability, application of learning to the workplace, industry placements or work experience and acquiring job or work-related knowledge and skills.

Kraus and Coates (2008) brought the FYE data and NSSE conceptions together in a joint paper. Perhaps unsurprisingly the focus they adopted was to present “a complementary tool [with NSSE]… in the ongoing quest to understand, monitor and promote student engagement” (ibid: 503). Thus they produced seven scales of SE, Given the focus on first year they added ‘transition engagement’ to academic engagement (developing the capacity to manage one’s time, study habits and strategies); peer (developing knowledge in collaboration with peers); student-staff engagement; intellectual (being challenged by the academy and challenging themselves); online (the use of web and computer software to support learning and access resources, the role of ICT in promoting independent and self-initiated learning, communicating and building community using ICT); and beyond-class engagement scale (students connecting with each other and the university community in activities beyond the classroom, both social and academic). However they did recognise that qualitative and on-going measures were required in addition to surveys in order to understand engagement.

SE research in secondary education There is a very considerable literature on SE in schools where disengagement remains a very serious issue. A refreshing aspect of this volume of research has been that there are number of rather more critical articles. Fredricks et al (2004), working in the USA, undertook a review of research and presented a threefold typology (ibid: 60).

Behavioural engagement draws on the idea of participation; it includes involvement in academic and social or extracurricular activities and is considered crucial for achieving positive academic outcomes and preventing dropping out. Emotional engagement

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encompasses positive and negative reactions to teachers, classmates, academics, and school and is presumed to create ties to an institution and influence willingness to do the work. Finally, cognitive engagement draws on the idea of investment; it incorporates thoughtfulness and willingness to exert the effort necessary to comprehend complex ideas and master difficult skills.

They viewed these types as non-hierarchal, all are equally important. They noted that these constructs overlapped with each other and with constructs from other fields, but (ibid, 60):

Despite these problems, we argue that engagement has considerable potential as a multidimensional construct that unites the three components in a meaningful way. In this sense, engagement can be thought of as a “meta” construct.

They also contended that much too little research had adopted the multi-dimensional notion of SE therefore it was “variable centred rather than pattern centred” (p87) which underplayed the interaction and synergy between the dimensions. Another advantage of the multi-dimensional construct is that it offers a richer picture of the individual which includes context and background.

Another more recent review of the school based SE literature was conducted by Gibbs and Poskitt (2010) in New Zealand. Drawing on same three dimensions as Fredericks et al (2004) they defined the highly engaged student as feeling connected; possessing a sense of agency, commitment to learning, intrinsic motivation, confident about the ability to learn; achievement oriented and using self-regulated processes. However the poorly engaged do not necessarily have an absence of these features, e.g. they just may chose not to be agentic or have different goals. They also noted that students need to be behaviourally and emotionally engaged before they can be cognitively engaged. They identified particular factors as the principal influences on fostering SE, and see them as interconnected. They ascribe what degree of support these have for positively influencing SE in the evidence base:

Level of evidence supporting FactorStrong Relationships with teachers and other students

Motivation and interest in learningGoal orientationAcademic self regulationSelf efficacy (sense of confidence as learners)

Moderate Relational learning (collaborative learning with peers)Some Personal agency (cognitive autonomy)

Dispositions to be a learner

Harris (2008) undertook a phenomenographic study of school teachers’ conceptions of SE. Another aspect of positive SE emerged from this – that of student ownership – where they see as their learning as ‘being owned’ by themselves and where they take responsibility rather than teacher, parent or other. Harris also noted critiques of the behavioural

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dimension – it is not enough just to obey the roles and be present, and of the emotional dimension – it is not enough to feel good about the school experience. These constitute a superficial engagement and not real engagement with learning.

Zygnier (2008) adopts a rather more critical stance. He challenges the deficit model of the student where lack of engagement is seen as a problem with the students, that they need to change. He attacks the model of Finn (1989) where SE is perceived to consist of two central components, participation and identification. Zygnier argues that this is simplistic; “portraying SE and its concurrent academic success as a function of the individual, ignoring the contribution of gender, socio-economic, ethnic and class factors”. (ibid:1769). For example, participation may merely be compliance. He draws on OECD research to show that academic success is not always predicted by SE and students with low participation and less sense of belonging still achieve well. He promotes a notion of “critical-transformative engagement” that includes a communal and social dimension rather than just being located within the student and where pedagogy is inclusive and aimed at creating a more just and democratic society (Sefa Dei, 2000).

Other useful contributions to SE In New Zealand Zepke and Leach have been researching on SE for some time. They undertook a thorough and extensive literature review of many types of SE studies to develop a conceptual organiser for SE (2011), which they applied in subsequent studies, e.g. using self-determination theory to look at evidence on motivation to engage (2010a). The table indicates the four dominant research perspectives they identified initially on SE in the literature – whilst acknowledging that this does not take full account of the complexity and ‘situatedness’ of SE.

Research perspectives

Motivation and agency(Engaged students are intrinsically motivated and want to exercise their agency)Transactional engagement(Students and teachers engage with each other)Institutional support(Institutions provide an environment conducive to learning)Active citizenship(Students and institutions work together to enable challenges to social beliefs and practices)

However when they sought to apply their model to students through empirical research they found that they needed to add two more components. They split ‘transactional’ into peer:peer and student:staff. They also found evidence about ‘non-institutional support’ from family and friends. This model is a genuine attempt to be comprehensive and holistic.

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Nonetheless it is comprehensive enough? And surely these perspectives rather overlap and the perspectives both overlap in some respects but are actually about different things altogether in others – a rather dissatisfying integration of diverse influences, perceptions and behaviours, and outcomes?

Another major contribution to the SE concept has been made by Ian Solomonides and Anna Reid in Australia They have particularly emphasised the ontological component of SE – how students develop a sense of self about aspects that are meaningful to them. Based on a qualitative study on students studying design they teased out dimensions about professional formation and discipline knowledge. They sought to develop a model applicable to all students therefore leaving various aspects to be adapted to the specific context that student was in. The model is shown below (Reid and Solomonides, 2007).

A relational model of SE (Raid and Solomonides)

This raises the complex issue of student identities which is a very major research area in its own right. Indeed the student’s journey to being a graduate can be seen as an ‘identity project’ (Holmes, 1995). There is insufficient space here to open this topic up properly but the identity(ies) that a student brings with them to higher education and the malleability of these and the extent to which these are reconstructed while being a student must impact profoundly on SE. This raises another important sociological concept of social and cultural

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Sense of Transformation

LearningUnderstanding

ThinkingDall’Alba and

Barnacle 2007

Sense of BeingConfidenceHappiness

Imaginative Self Knowledge

Barnett 2004, 2005, 2007

Sense of Being a Professional

Reid and Davies 2002

Reid and Petocz 2004

Sense of Discipline Knowledge

Dahlgren et al 2005

Abrandt Dahlgren et al 2007

?

Sense of Engagement

Bryson and Hand 2008

Coates 2006??

capital which also impacts considerably on student’s transition and success (David, 2009; Thomas et al, 2005; Reay et al, 2005). These important issues need to be taken into account in any consideration of SE.

This links to notions of inclusivity in Higher Education – a very challenging task in the depersonalising world that is mass Higher Education. Hockings (2011) has undertaken a number of studies in this area and has identified ‘artisan teachers’ as those who deploy teaching approaches which foster a more profound form of academic engagement in all students (ibid:4)

… the [students] are actively using high level cognitive skills that are often associated with a deep approach to learning … whilst drawing on and exploring their own and others’ knowledge, experiences and backgrounds, in the search for deep understanding and knowledge. In this way they bring their own lives to bear on the subject of their learning making it personally meaningful, relevant and engaging to them.

The crucial pint here is about creating the opportunity for students to bring and share their own experiences and perceptions into the classroom.

There has been little mention of the subject and discipline aspect of studying at university so far. To most academic staff the subject really does matter - arguably it might matter too much, in the view of many students as they are unlikely to share quite the same degree of enthusiasm and aspiration to become a subject expert as their teachers (Brennan et al, 2010). Nonetheless there are studies which demonstrate the salience of the subject in student’s perceptions. McCune (2009) demonstrates that to enhance students’ ‘willingness to engage’ they needed to perceive they were undertaking ‘authentic learning experiences’. Willingness to engage has a resonance with Ron Barnett’s concept of the ‘will to learn’ (2007:70):

The student's being, her will to learn, her strong self, her willingness to be authentic: all these are a set of foundations for her knowing and her practical engagements. Without a self, without a will to learn, without a being that has come into itself, her efforts to know and to act within her programme of study cannot even begin to form with any assuredness.

McCune develops a model of influences which has much relevance for SE in that that it brings out the complex interactions between larger and local environments, communities of practice, ‘what the student brings’ and how these are mediated by social practices to create more or less opportunity for sense of authenticity to be perceived. Authenticity refers to the sense the student has of relevance and alignment to their own aspirations – in her example, ‘becoming a scientist’.

Francois Dubet is an educational sociologist with intimate expertise on the French education system based on many empirical studies. Dubet criticised what he saw as outdated conceptions of students created more than a generation ago by Bourdieu and Passeron,

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before the massification and widening participation agenda. Dubet (1994) has derived three dimensions which describe ‘ways of being a student’. He contends that the student experience (and their student identity) is constructed, rather than from context or social background, from the combination of:

The nature of the personal project – what is the purpose or outcome of their degree The degree of integration into university life The level of intellectual engagement with the subject

Dubet emphasises that the positive or negative emphasis a student gives to these is fluid. The application of Dubet’s model generates 8 archetypes from the different combinations of positive or negative attributes. Dubet found considerable differences between subjects in student orientation. Jary and Lebeau (2009) applied this model to sociology students based on the larger SOMUL study on the organisational and social mediation of ‘what is learned’ at university (Brennan et al, 2010). They found examples of all archetypes in all types of institution (demonstrating more similarities than differences in environment and experience), with the exception of an absence of students who were negative about all three –“a case of anomy” (acknowledging this type of student is unlikely to participate in a research study). The application of Dubet’s typology seems a little problematic because it is questionable if the integration and intellectual engagement are simple dichotomies; one suspects that the vagueness; of these dimensions obscures greater diversity in the students. Nevertheless Jary and Lebeau (ibid) emerge with a rather controversial finding – that all forms of archetype bar the entirely negative ‘anomy’ one are viable. For example they suggest that students with very low integration or intellectual engagement, are nonetheless engaged enough (presumably via the personal project) to be successful.

The notion of intellectual and ethical development is pertinent to SE, not least because it is one of the key goals of education and involves the grasping of threshold concepts, dealing with ‘troublesome knowledge’ and transformative learning. Three useful models are interlinked and have built on each other (Perry, 1999; Baxter Magolda, 1994; Belenky,1999). For example Baxter Magolda’s ‘ways of knowing’ and later concept of self authorship may suggest an interweaving with SE or at least willingness or readiness to engage. This is because the more advanced or sophisticated ways of knowing imply an open-mindedness, academic self-confidence, reflexivity and an ability to relate to others which infer that the individual both wishes to engage and is already engaged.

Handley et al (2011) investigated the problematic area of SE with assessment feedback. They argue that this aspect is rather more important than just considering the effectiveness of feedback mechanisms. They raise important questions and offer approaches to investigate SE in this aspect. The point about feedback is that it is bound temporally and in scope so engaging with it is qualitatively different from overall study or institutional engagement. Therefore they also distinguish between being ready to engage and actively

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engaging. Readiness (to engage or perhaps to disengage) is not the same as action. This is a corollary with willingness to engage.

This raises another key point – engagement to what. Much of that has emerged in the studies presented here but there is also an issue about engagement to what level. In our earlier empirical work we found that students expressed that there were differing levels or spheres of SE as well as changing degrees of engagement within those spheres. (SE was dynamic and both fragile and resilient in different situations and contexts) (Bryson and Hand, 2007b:8):

Within a classroom or in undertaking a particular task or assignment Within/to a particular module Within/to and across the course/programme of study Within/to the university or Higher Education

The construction of engagement at each of the levels will affect the other levels in a dynamic manner. We note that for the more ‘local’ levels such as a task, that engagement with that task might be quite transient given the timescale and nature of the task and that the notion of engagement with education is a much more diffuse concept.

There is a whole focus of SE which is rather different than any of the discussion so far. This focus has a prominent position in England at the moment because the Funding Council have privileged it through commissioned work by Little et al (2009) and subsequent imperatives. However this is about the collective role of students and their opportunities to influence the broader student experience through representation and involvement in governance and decision making – an ‘industrial relations model’ - gaining student feedback, via questionnaires or student representation on committees, as part of the individual university’s quality assurance framework. This focus has also been taken up by the HEA (2010) although their recent collaboration with the NUS has generated an emphasis on the partnership approach which has enabled more inclusive and wider work on students involved at every level, e.g. in co-designing modules (NUS, 2010). This type of focus does contribute to SE through opportunities for student involvement and empowerment. These may be directly engaging to a few students and positive to others in creating a better culture and environment for engagement for SE to flourish. However it does not assist the conceptualisation of SE except in one regard and may actually confuse the attempt to reach a common understanding. The latter results from the focus on the collective which tends to aggregate and stereotype students whereas SE is located in the individual. There is one very good feature which this focus can create, and that is hearing the authentic student voice. In so much of the research and dissemination of evidence about SE there seems to be very little student participation beyond that of being the passive source of ‘data’. Unfortunately it requires some delving but there are some examples in the HEA/NUS project of students writing case studies about SE – a welcome innovation. There is also good evidence that offering opportunities for involvement, participation and partnership creates excellent

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prospects for students to become more engaged in the purer sense of the term (Bovill, 2011).

Healey et al (2010:22) propose a framework for this form of SE:

Micro: engagement with their own learning and that of other students Meso: engagement in quality assurance and enhancement processes Macro: engagement in strategy developmentThey give an example of student involvement in the design and agreement of a university Teaching & Learning strategy. This type of SE is very much about empowerment, and is a powerful way of deepening SE, not least because the students who participate in such activities become much more embedded in institutional life and culture – moreover they start to influence and change them - and act as ambassadors and role models to other students.

Kember et al (2001) drew on empirical work from interviews with part-time students to examine the concept of ‘belonging’. The researchers noted that having a stronger affiliation to college and study appeared to enhance both retention and learning outcomes and that the teachers had an important role in enhancing a sense of belonging through establishing a good rapport and strong relationships. This sense of belonging links with earlier themes about involvement and connectedness and the salience of relationships as well as sense of being. This concept shares similarities to that of academic and social integration. Tinto (1993) developed a model of student retention in which integration plays a key role in whether the student stays or withdraws. The model theorises that the student arrives in HE with a set of intentions, goals and commitments. These are influenced and reconstructed by the ‘academic’ experience the students perceive themselves to have (progress, performance and the impression gained of the commitment from teaching staff to that student) and by the ‘social’ experience (self-esteem and quality of relationships with peers and staff). Tinto suggested that insufficient integration results in student dropout. This model has been criticised for its failure to take full account of external factors such as the policies of the institution (Yorke, 1999) and other factors (Yorke and Longden, 2004) and for being too homogeneous (Brunsden et al, 2000) especially within the ‘widened community’ of students that widening participation has brought (Rhodes and Nevill, 2004). The notion of ‘cultural integration’ seems to be under played in the model. However Tinto and other commentators have argued convincingly that ‘involvement’ matters, particularly at the critical early phase of transition when the student first enters HE. Tinto himself (2006) notes that involvement is the same concept as engagement.

Several of the key players, Kuh, Tinto and McInnis inter alia, in SE research have argued that the establishment of learning communities are crucial and that engagement is enriched to a significant degree by establishing a sense of community in the educational setting. Perry (1999) has concluded that although some students could achieve levels of development and independence of thought with very little support, “for the majority…the most important

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support seemed to derive from a special sense of community…from reciprocal acts of recognition and confirmation” (ibid: 238). Wenger (1999) has written extensively on the notion of community, particularly communities of practice, and espoused the importance of situated learning. Therefore there would appear to be strong potential for SE if students perceive they are part of one or more communities of practice in which they have feel competent and which accord with their ‘learning trajectory’ in Wenger’s terms. McCune (2008) found some support for the existence of this in her study but other research (Bryson et al, 2009) has found that few students perceive they are part of, or have the opportunity to be part of, a community of practice in their university studies.

Many authors have focussed rather specifically on academic engagement and either ignored or downplayed SE issues with the broader student experience which usually includes issues about identities, roles and interactions which are distant from classroom or university. Our own research (Hardy and Bryson, 2010) emphasises the salience to students of social SE. An exception to this is Case (2007) in a South African study. She looked at relationships and in addition to relationships with studies, classmates and lecturers she looked at broader university life, career and home. She found a range of both engaging and alienating experiences. Case advocated using the lens of alienation and it is with this concept that we shall conclude our presentation of the literature.

Mann (2001) focussed on barriers to engagement and the polar opposite of engagement – alienation. Mann (ibid) provided an insightful and persuasive analysis of powerful forces present in Higher Education which potentially can lead to alienation of the student. She explored the ideas of classical and postmodern theorists to identify several factors present in contemporary universities, such as:

Too much focus on performativity and functional serving of capitalist society – overemphasis on ‘getting a useful degree’ and employability

Academic discourses which constrain student identities Students are estranged and disoriented by being “outsiders in a foreign land”, they are

entering an unfamiliar culture with different values and beliefs, which they are forced to adopt to be successful.

Teachers exert disciplinary power over the student (e.g. through assessment). This combines with the student’s inability to express their own creativity and the point that students have little control or choice over the learning process to create a Marxian ‘exile from the self.’

Such forces do more than disengage students, they can lead to student withdrawal. They may also disengage the staff. Even attempts to create a more welcoming community can have adverse effects. Mann (2005) focussed on the pressure on the individual student to conform to codes of ‘good student’ behaviour by looking at examples of the communications and norms that occur in online learning communities. She warned of the danger of creating cultural practices that bind teachers and learners to an alienating social

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order. Thus transition into Higher Education becomes a vital stage. A student entering and experiencing HE encounters a culture where the beliefs and values of the members are likely to be very different from their previous experience and therefore present challenges and tensions (Ylijoki, 2000). Not only is the student under pressure to adopt the moral order of the academic discipline in order to be accepted by the academics, but has joined a new and unknown social grouping of fellow students that become significant others in the construction of their social identity – more scope for alienation.

Krause (2005) draws on the 2004 FYE survey to consider some implications of what she terms ‘inertia’ which she prefers to disengagement because it is not active, “which aptly depicts the state of being for the group of students who do not actively pursue opportunities to engage in their learning community” (ibid:7). She considers these students at risk of withdrawal and even if they remain they will not benefit from HE. But she also sees another group (p9): “For some students engagement with the university experience is like engaging in a battle, a conflict…the culture of the institution is foreign…alienating and uninviting.” Such students are likely to be from disadvantaged backgrounds or be international. Her point is that such students are not unwilling to engage, indeed they be trying hard to do so, but ‘lose’ because they are not familiar with the rules.

Other researchers have also raise concerns about taking too positive a tone with SE. Limitations on the ability of the teacher to change student orientations were also found in an empirical study by Honkimaki et al (2004:447) that identified four student types, indicating “that not even pedagogical innovations can make all students do their best” because some students were not responsive to interventions. Hockings (2010) noted that a student centred approach – an approach advocated for its ability to engage students – failed to do so for 30% of students in the study. On investigating why she found that this approach had “challenged their approaches to and conceptions of learning, their conceptions of knowledge and ways of knowing and we challenged their sense of self. By challenging them we created an environment which engaged some students’ identities and distanced others’.” (ibid: 96). Similarly Zepke and Leach (2005) argue that academics should not seek to force integration on students but meet them part-way by acknowledging their pre-existing cultural values and beliefs. Hockings (ibid) does not suggest we give up, but that we need to adopt wider considerations of SE, sociological and epistemological aspects in addition to approaches to learning, in order to open a dialogue with students on how to engage all of them. This exemplifies a key point about recognising heterogeneity. Haggis (2004) warns that ‘generalised, quasi-deterministic models’ may not deliver successful outcomes for all students because of the diversity and complexity of learning (and perception of situation) at the level of the individual – and counsels against universal remedies.

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Making sense of all this – considerationsWe have sought to present a selection of the literature on SE based on useful conceptions that commentators have proposed. There are many, many ideas there and they demonstrate the variety of lenses that researchers have taken to this complex topic. However some common themes emerge and these we offer as a common understanding:

Engagement is socially constructed and reconstructed by the student and through the interactions they have with others and the environment.

It is multi-dimensional and there are a host of issues and factors that influence SE. These are not amenable to reductionism – because it is their interaction and synergy that is important – thus a holistic perspective is needed.

SE is broader than just about the academic and university environment – students need to make sense of their whole lives not just part of their identities.

SE is much more than just about doing. Being and becoming is critical. At the heart of SE lie ontological considerations although there are epistemological considerations too.

SE is dynamic and fluid. Although some aspects are resilient, others are fragile and this varies between individuals.

Great caution must be exercised in seeking to judge whether an individual is engaged (and even harder to judge how much) because it is quality rather than quantity that is important.

A revised definition of student engagement might look something like:

Student engagement is about what a student brings to Higher Education in terms of goals, aspirations, values and beliefs and how these are shaped and mediated by their experience whilst a student. SE is constructed and reconstructed through the lenses of the perceptions and identities held by students and the meaning and sense a student makes of their experiences and interactions. As players in and shapers of the educational context, educators need to foster educationally purposeful SE to support and enable students to learn in constructive and powerful ways and realise their potential in education and society.

These points raise some methodological and methods considerations. The NSSE and its imitators have gained a central position and focus in SE in Higher Education. Such surveys may offer rather more insight than crude instruments such as the UK National Student Survey into what universities and colleges are offering students in terms of achieving ‘good’ HE outcomes. The NSSE and AUSSE offer benchmarking and cross-institutional comparison. That has its own dangers as such measures become appropriated to become a management tool and performance indicator with all its consequent misapplications. But distilling the complex concepts of SE into a survey has some profound problems.

Such surveys can only offer a proxy about levels of SE and the promise of measurement is illusory.

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Standardisation of questions in pursuit of generalisability loses sensitivity to local contexts and undermines the validity of the responses.

SE is located in the individual and requires research approaches which bring out rich pictures. Patterns are much more important than variables.

The closed questions of such survey give no voice to the student at all. Their perspective is shoehorned to fit with no opportunity to present an alternative view to any issue.

There is emerging critique about the NSSE and AUSSE even within their own methodological paradigm. The construct validity of the five benchmarks has been challenged by LaNasa et al (2009) who suggests an alternative eight dimensions. Other researchers who sought to associate the NSSE results with actual outcomes have found little correlation (Carini et al, 2006; Gordon et al, 2008). There are also issues about the variation in interpretation and self-reporting of the items by students, particularly between those in different contexts (Bowman, 2010; Porter, 2009).

Moreover much care has to be exercised in developing dimensions and scales about SE. This is redolent of reductionism on such an idiographic and holistic concept. Too often in research the voice and view of the students is absent or obscured. Trowler (2010) recently looked at over one thousand items on SE and found very few where the voice of the student really emerged.

Whatever method we use to study SE we need to problematise the issues. There has been rather at lot of research which though it may appear ‘robust’ in a narrow definition of term, has not done this. Krause (2005:4) critiques the student involvement paradigm as a “a positive and largely unproblematic theorising of student engagement. In fact, student engagement is much more problematic than such a paradigm would suggest.” For example it is clear that attempts at offering and doing ‘engagement’ are not enough to engage all students and requires much more considered approaches – approaches that consider what the individual brings, perceives and feels, desires and aspires to.

We suggest that part of the problem may arise, at least in part, because of the paradigmatic definition of SE that is dualistic i.e. what both students and institutions do. That also creates confusion between SE as an outcome and SE as a process. Although we understand that of course it is the interactions of these (and some other aspects too) that are important, we propose that in seeking conceptual clarity, we should separate them into:

Engaging students Students engaging

Engaging studentsThis is about what the staff and other parties offer in creating opportunities for students to engage in educationally purposeful ways. In order to achieve that we need to consider wider issues so that we ensure we accommodate these in our offerings. We need to mindful of all the alienating forces on individuals and the context and mitigate these. The need to be

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inclusive to accommodate diversity argues for a set of principles rather than any form of prescription. So offering a repertoire of approaches is as important as all these pet innovative ideas! We propose an agenda that puts engaging students at the heart of what we do and aligning all that we do with that. An example is the approach to the first year in Queensland University of Technology (Kift) – ‘transition pedagogies’, as long as the caveats suggested by Hockings (2009) are taken into account.

The principles are not new ones. We have drawn on the excellent ideas from the literature covered earlier, as these are informed by what many students have responded to in positive ways already e.g. (Mann, 2001; Krause, 2005; Zepke and Leach, 2010b; Chickering and Gamson, 1987)

We should:

1. Foster student’s willingness and readiness to engage by enhancing their self-belief.2. Embrace the point that students have diverse backgrounds, expectations,

orientations and aspirations – thus different ‘ways of being a student’, and to welcome, respect and accommodate all of these in an inclusive way.

3. Enable and facilitate trust relationships (between staff:students and students:students) in order to develop a discourse with each and all students and to show solidarity with them.

4. Create opportunities for learning (in its broadest sense) communities so that students can develop a sense of competence and belonging within these communities.

5. Teach in ways to make learning participatory, dialogic, collaborative, authentic, active and critical.

6. Foster autonomy and creativity, and offer choice and opportunities for growth and enriching experiences in a low risk and safe setting.

7. Recognise the impact on learning of non-institutional influences and accommodate these.

8. Design and implement assessment for learning with the aim to enable students to develop their ability to evaluate critically the quality and impact of their own work.

9. Seek to negotiate and reach a mutual consensus with students on managing workload, challenge, curriculum and assessment for their educational enrichment – through a partnership model – without diluting high expectations and educational attainment.

10. Enable students to become active citizens and develop their social and cultural capital.

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Note that the principles are not just antecedents or influences on engagement – they are about creating a virtuous circle in which opportunities are offered (by the conscious effort of the staff) and enabled (by the appropriate wider environment being aligned with this and working with the grain rather than against it) and this not just fosters student engagement but creates deeper interactions and new relationships that then change the community in fruitful ways – reconstruction. Therefore it behoves us as educators to put student engagement at the heart of what we think and do.

This follows Astin’s maxim in that (Pascerella and Terenzini (2005:53):

…Institutional environment [has] a critical role in that if offers students a wide variety of social and academic opportunities to become involved with new ideas, people and experiences. The student however, plats a lead role inasmuch as change is likely to occur only to the student capitalizes on opportunities and becomes involved, actively exploiting the opportunities to change or grow…

Students engagingThis has elements of process, agency and outcome as it is dynamic and volatile. It is located within the being of the individual. The multi-dimensional nature of the concept and the diversity and variety of relevant concepts makes constructing a conceptual map rather challenging. SE is invisible and elusive to grasp. We can never see more than part of the picture and that picture is likely to change – a real hurdle to validity and reliability and a caution to placing too much faith in its manifestations.

We offer a heuristic device of the black box. This is not a three dimensional box but contains rather more. We can slice that in a number of ways to produce a two or perhaps three dimensional cross-section that shows some of the conceptions and how they might be ‘associated’. The different dimensions identified in previous research are likely to appear in this (but not in the same slice). One slice might look like the diagram overleaf. Other slices might indicate; spheres/levels of SE; key influences in detail; patterns of SE within an individual at a given moment in time; etc ….

Previous attempts to capture a map all the elusive complexity of the ‘meta-construct’ of student engagement have not succeeded and tend to coloured by the philosophical stance of the cartographer. Therefore the I-E-O model from Astin (1991) is redolent with a reductionist approach (with 200 plus variables) and underplays the pattern nature of SE. Likewise the NSSE and AUSSE. Indeed any scientific model that proposes that it can neatly be divided into antecedents/influences, how the individual makes sense of it all (the psychological), and outputs/consequences has too much of an element of linearity amd discreteness to it to adequately the holistic reality of the individual. The acid test is applying models to individuals and evidence. The loose framework of Zepke and Leach (2011) has

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merit but did not seem to offer a good explanation of how individuals saw and expressed their own engagement. The more ontological ‘sense of being’ offers a different perspective (Reid and Solomonides, 2007) but again does not seem to cover the full scope of SE with full clarity. The sociological approach of Dubet (1994) and ‘ways of being a student’ appears simple but seems very difficult to apply with validity and reliability to evidence. These too might be considered further slices of the black box. And one further one which is rather neglected is the form of SE which is about student empowerment and the student taking a much fuller part in institutional processes, management and determination of where that institution is going. Most commentators have ignored this thus far despite its potential to deliver a much greater sense of partnership in an educational community.

It is the complex interactions and the constructivist nature of SE that prevents a map being drawn. And the dynamism and volatility at the level of individual allied to the rather tricky issue that as soon as the researcher interacts with the individual student in a meaningful discourse, that very evidence about SE is likely to change, which challenges clarity. Zepke (2011) has proposed the application of complexity theory to SE. This notion of as dynamic interconnected, non-hierarchal network is useful but difficult to apply in practice to analysis.

However we should be relaxed about the outcome that this complex idea is not reducible or even possible to depict as a single or universal synthesis. Such is its very nature. But that does not lessen its critical importance in education and the effort and goal of understanding it sheds light on productive and positive ways of engaging students – such a worthwhile enterprise for all in HE.

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A part of the conceptual map of engagement – the dynamic cycle

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