By Althea Need Kaminske

Engagement is a term I hear a lot. Teachers want their students to be more engaged and students want their classes to be more engaging. My fellow faculty members will often lament that students are not doing well in class because they are not engaged - and they want to know what they can do to improve student engagement. Despite its importance to students and teachers alike, engagement is a tricky concept to define. When I press people on what they mean by engagement, it seems to mean some mix of attention, “active” learning, and interest. But how can you tell if someone is engaged in learning? And do interest and attention lead to better learning?

How can you tell if someone is engaged in learning? You really can’t, at least, not by just looking at someone. As this post from the Effortful Educator (@effortfuleduktr) points out, engagement can look very different on the outside. Asking questions, participating in hands-on activities, and having lively discussions about the material may all be overt signs of engagement, but someone can still be very engaged with material that they are quietly reading or listening intently to. If engagement is being used as a short hand for ‘engaging with effective processes that promote understanding and learning’ then teachers (and students) should be aware that those processes can look very different on the outside. For example, retrieval can be used in a variety of ways that look very different from one another. A classroom debate where students have to respond to claims made from the opposing side can involve retrieval. A student asking for clarification on a definition or example can involve retrieval. A student quietly responding to questions on a quiz or a test can involve retrieval (and even have fun!). An outside observer might feel that some of these examples are more ‘engaging’ than others, but they all require students to engage in effective processes that promote understanding and learning.

Another aspect of engagement seems to be interest and attention. If we focus on this aspect of engagement the definition is closer to ‘participating in activities that capture interest and attention in a subject matter’. In this view interest and attention are, in and of themselves, effective processes that promote understanding and learning, or they lead to effective processes that promote understanding and learning. So, do interest and attention lead to better learning?

First, I want to be clear that focused attention is very beneficial for learning. Promoting focused attention (1) and avoiding, or mitigating, divided attention (2), helps students process relevant information and ignore irrelevant information (3). However, when talking about ways to engage students people often talk about grabbing or capturing attention, without necessarily worrying about whether students are multitasking in the process.

Second, interest is a term that is hard to define. In one context, interest might be a short hand for paying attention. In another, interest might signal some sort of background or history with a subject. The Four Phase Model of Interest Development by Hidi and Renninger (2006) is a useful framework for disentangling the various forms of interest (4). They propose that there are two main types of interest. Situational interest is interest that happens in the moment. A funny story or a cool demonstration might capture attention and cause someone to be interested in the situation. Individual interest is interest that is the result of repeated engagement with a topic, and is indicative of a more substantive background knowledge and greater ability to learn more about a topic. I clearly have an interest in how learning and memory work, but this interest is also reflective of years of research and study on the topic that makes it easier for me to read the latest research, understand it, and learn more about the topic. On the other hand, I recently had a conversation with a student about a Japanese band called Babymetal, who started the kawaii metal sub-genre, that was very interesting. It was, relative to my experience, a fairly unique and therefore situationally interesting conversation, but I have a very limited range of experience and background knowledge with this topic and remember very little about the nuances of metal music composition from the conversation.

In Hidi and Renninger’s (2006) model, it is possible to develop interest from a situational interest to an individual interest. As the name suggests, they propose four phases to this development. Situational interest - the type of interest that I suspect most people are cultivating when they are trying to make something more engaging - is the first phase in this model. The next phase is sustained situational interest, where students will be further exposed to, or seek out an opportunity to re-engage with, material on the subject. I will admit that after the conversation about Babymetal I was curious about other sub-genres of metal music and delighted to find a wide range of sub-genres like folk metal that includes a sub-sub-genre of pirate metal. My interest in the topic has moved from situational to sustained situational interest. From there, one can move further into a developing individual interest. Students with a developing individual interest will have an increased motivation to repeatedly re-engage with the material over time. If I were to continue to develop this interest in heavy metal sub-genres I would listen to several albums by prominent artists, read up on opinion pieces about what is considered important within the genre, and attend some concerts. Finally, the last phase in interest development is individual interest. At this point the student has amassed a great deal of experience and knowledge with the subject matter. I am clearly far away from this stage of interest development, but a long-time fan of a particular sub-genre of music would have the background knowledge and experience to make them a connoisseur of the latest albums and trends within the genre.

So, do interest and attention lead to better learning? I would argue that they set the stage for better learning, but do no necessarily guarantee it. Often, when designing activities or lessons to be engaging the focus is in on fostering a type of situational interest. It is possible that this interest can be developed into a more meaningful, individual interest that is beneficial for, and indicative of, learning. However, there are many steps between situational and individual interest.

Engagement is a tricky term. It is obviously desirable to have an engaging classroom, but it’s difficult to know when engagement is happening and if it is beneficial for learning. Interest and attention are certainly key components of engagement, but certain types of interest and certain types of attention are better for learning than others.

References

1. Mrazek, M. D., Franklin, M. S., Phillips, D. T., Baird, B., & Schooler, J. W. (2013). Mindfulness Training Improves Working Memory Capacity and GRE Performance While Reducing Mind Wandering. Psychological Science, 24(5), 776–781. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612459659

2. Gopher, D., Armony, L., & Greenshpan, Y. (2000). Switching tasks and attention policies. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 129, 308-339.

3. Simms, N. K., Frausel, R. R., & Richland, L. E. (2018). Working memory predicts children’s analogical reasoning. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 166(2018), 160-177.

4. Hidi, S. & Renninger, K. A. (2006). The four-phase model of interest development. Educational Psychologist, 41, 111-127.