Student engagement is to what degree the students are involved in the
learning process. For example, if a student is actively listening to some kind
of discussion and simultaneously writing down some key points, then we can say
that the student is engaged. There are five levels of student engagement
identified by researchers:
●
Authentic
engagement: In this, the student is immersed in the work having a clear meaning
and has an immediate value such as reading book based on the topic which is of
personal interest to the student.
●
Ritual
compliance: In ritual compliance, the work involved has very little or no
direct significance to students, but still there is some kind of extrinsic
outcomes that keep the student engaged, for example earning credits or grades
which are necessary for getting accepted to the college.
●
Passive
compliance: Some of the task that the students are not directly associated or
related to but they give their full attention and effort to complete the task
in order to avoid negative penalties and consequences such as they does not
want to stay back in recess time to complete the task.
●
Retreatism: In
retreatism, the students are not attached from the assigned work and they
somehow are not making any attempt to accomplish the task but they are not even
disrupting others to learn in the process.
●
Rebellion: In
this, as the name suggests, students are not willing and they refuse to perform
the assigned task, they act disruptive and they also make an attempt to
substitute any alternate activities.
There are seven ways by which one can increase the student engagement.
This is required because students who are involved in the task learn things
more efficiently and they grasp the things they are learning in a better way.
Also, students who are engaged in learning task tend to be more passionate.
Some of the suggestions by which students engagement can increase are:
●
Use 10:2 method:
In this, after every 10 minutes of instruction the teacher should let students
process, grasp and respond to the instruction for 2 minutes. This can be done
by letting them write about what they understood and what they learned, any
query and question they have or they can also discuss the content they learned
with their fellow classmate.
●
The teacher can
include movement in the lessons: In this, the students are required to answer
the question asked but by moving from his place to some spot in the classroom
such as writing on the whiteboard or standing or even sitting in some other
place, etc.
●
The teacher
should pick up the pace of teaching: There is a misconception that teacher
should go slow and let student really understand and get engaged in a lesson
learned. But there are studies reporting that when the teacher is at a brisk
pace of instruction, students get more opportunities to get engaged, respond
and also move to next concept.
●
The teacher
should provide frequent feedback and it should be effective so that the student
can have a clear understanding of the lesson.
●
When the teacher
asks any question she should give at least 5 to 7 seconds of thinking time to
the students to answer the question.
