Responses are due by March 16, 2011
Question: We have increased student engagement across the school from 53% in fall 2009 to 83% in fall 2010. Mr. Wilbanks wants to know what is responsible for the improvement. What do you think has contributed to our school's improvement?
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteWhile the statistics are impressive, I do have questions about the validity. How is "engagement" defined? If we simply go on the "appearance" of students in the classroom, is that a reliable measure of "engagement" or merely a reflection of the students' ability to "appear" engaged? Is the measurement one that can truly be quantified or is it a qualitative observation?
ReplyDeleteHow is engagement mesured? Even when I have kids in my class, many appear to be engaged but how do I know if they are truely paying attention or engaged in the class discussion or their work. BA
ReplyDeleteThe engagement study that Dr. Husby is conducting is a qualitative study that examines overt engagement. For example, we observed an upper level foreign language class reading Don Quixote in full spanish. The teacher had assigned 5 students to read aloud and the rest of the class to follow along silently. All the kids 'appeared' to be engaged, but according to the study we could only count 5 students as engaged. This is just an example.
ReplyDeleteSo, in terms of what is working for engagement, what do you think we do that makes a difference?
In regards to true engagement, what I see that works in my classes is to pose open ended questions requiring the students articulate both data, in the form of supporting facts, and interpretation of the question from their perspectives. Does everyone participate in the discussion? In response to my rhetorical question, the answer is no; however, it does suggest that there are multiple forms of engagement specific to the individual student as there are "multiple" intelligences. #2
ReplyDeleteAgreed, I believe there are many forms of engagement, and some kids,especially gifted students, don't have to be paying explicit attention to a teacher to be grasping material.
ReplyDeleteOne of the main reasons, in my opinion, for the increased engagement is the increased focus on collaboration in professional development. To me, collaboration is one of the best methods to increase engagement as students work toward a solution to a common task.
I do think other factors could have influenced the study such as observations early in the morning and early in the semester would likely have more engagement.
Maureen Sneed asked me to post her comments for feedback:
ReplyDeleteMaureen wrote: I was not teaching at Mill Creek in the 2009- 2010 school year so I can't address the changes made. I do know that I am focused on student engagement since this is an MCHS focus. Last week,for example, the students were working on a review. I glanced around the room to make sure all were engaged. It "appeared" that 100% were. Then I started going around the room answering questions and checking work. I noticed that 2 students had worksheets on top of their Math books not related to Math. In the past, I always focused primarily on the students asking questions and assumed that those not asking were doing fine. The increased awareness of teachers might be a reason for increased engagement.
Looks like my comment didn't show up, so I'm posting again.
ReplyDeleteIn response to the original question, I think the overt focus this year on student engagement has made a positive impact on our overall student engagement stats. Just having it always in the back of my mind has made a difference in my classroom. As I see certain lesson plans sliding off into less than 100% engagement land, I am more apt to change my aproach mid lesson - maybe throw in a change up like a spontaneous summarizing technique or an out of seat activity to get them moving.
In the resource setting I feel like spontaneous change to lessons when kids are loosing focus is necessary to keep my students engaged. These kinds of adjustments would help in gen ed, too, but may be more difficult to implement.
In response to Phillip's first post - yes, I guess you can't definitely conclude that students were engaged in the reading activity. Too bad, though, that we can't somehow measure that. Reading seems to be less and less expected, and I think our students are worse off for this. Some of my best memories of high school lessons are of discussions about books we were required to read as homework - and most of us actually did the reading. Since so many of our kids don't do what ever is assigned outside of class, if we take out class reading we'll be down to virtually no reading at all with that group of students. Huge loss.
ReplyDeleteAs far as being able to tell if a student is engaged, that's a bit tricky, isn't it? I had a student last year that could spit out word for word what we talked about in our discussions even a day or a week after they occurred. But this student was unable to use any of that information to solve a problem. So in his case, even "participating" in the discussion by repeating the last formula or rule was not truely engagement. I would say true engagement is any activity that is fostering learning.
ReplyDeleteI think what has contributed to our schools improvement was more teachers becoming aware of what and how to get the students engaged.
ReplyDelete