Understanding and enhancing student engagement in higher education is a critical challenge that educators and institutions face, especially in the context of the changes brought about by the global pandemic. This post reflects on the issue, inspired by my own recent positive experiences with students which contrasted the often-discussed lack of engagement in traditional academic environments. It suggests that our current approach to discussing student engagement may overlook the broader, more complex identities of students as active learners, community members, and individuals facing a unique set of challenges in today’s world. I also broach how an over-emphasis on assessment and an under-emphasis on joy play in to engagement.

On engagement

I can’t help thinking when we talk about students as being ‘disengaged’ or not-engaged, we fail to see them as their whole-selves – as individuals who have made an active choice to learn and gain a qualification, as people who love and who experience loss, who are doing their best to navigate a world as problematic as a dystopian movie would depict, and as people who endeavour to learn, grow, connect, and achieve. By making a choice to come to university students are already engaged, but just maybe in different ways than previous cohorts.  Imposed labelling is widely known to be damaging in many circumstances. Frequent conversations about poor-engagement might well be labelling a generation inferring, unreasonably and unhelpfully. Who wants to be labelled by what they are not. Such talk is unhelpful and divisive, and full of assumptions.   

Students as confident and autonomous agents

Take students in their second year in 2024. If they were on a direct path from school or college without any time away from education, then this group would have experienced cancelled GCSE’s/level 2 qualifications, level 3 qualifications mainly done from home with serious bouts of loneliness, and perhaps a menu of challenges including physical and mental health issues, difficult family circumstances, sub-optimal learning spaces, poorly configured tech, and many other hurdles. Some applied for university with limited opportunity to view and explore their choices. And despite all of this, these individuals succeeded to achieve their goal of entering university. After arriving in these circumstances, perhaps priorities go beyond learning and include building relationships, fun, overcoming personal anxieties, or following passions that have been suppressed through the lost teenage years. And, powerfully, this generation learned perhaps more independently, and with more isolation, than any other group in my lifetime. Yet, not physically attending didn’t lead to failure. Might it be that this uniquely shaped cohort gained confidence in being able to learn independently. Perhaps this set of events has given a generation of students a deep confidence in their choices about what to attend and when. Is it that students are disengaged or are they simply empowered to make choices? For many, not all, but many – the second year represents a period of transition, housemates and house drama, cost of living issues, wellbeing challenges, transport issues, and more. All of these are non-trivial parts of life to navigate, and they now layer on to the pandemic experience. This portrayal is intended to be a trigger for discussion and questioning – it won’t reflect all student experiences and it isn’t intended to, but similar stories could no doubt be written for other groups or at an individual level. 

And then add to this … assessment 

I do wonder whether we have overemphasised assessment at the cost of devaluing the joy of learning, creating a community, reading and mastery. The ‘assessment for learning’ and ‘assessment as learning approaches’ – which essentially wrap learning and assessment in to one harmonious system are the well-established ideal, however assessment is complex and rarely works as well as we in educational development would wish it to. Assessment drives so much, and then we wonder why many students focus strategically on the final task. Instead, a curriculum and culture of curiosity would ideally be driven by passion and energy and experience, and not by an obsession with outcomes – be these grades or salaries. Is it time for us to disarm assessment and take away its hold over learning? 

More than content

For little or no cost, I can hear audio books, podcasts, TedTalks, YouTube content and much more. I can hear directly from some of the greatest thinkers of our time in business, science, technology, psychology, politics, music … well almost anything. This isn’t new – since early peer to peer music download sites in the 90s content has become cheaper and more available than ever. In light of this, lectures would need to be awesome to make me want to attend. The good news is that I do believe classes can be awesome [and often are]. And there is something magical about an event experienced together.Perhaps we need to be clear on what the role of an educator is, and for me, it’s rarely about ‘just’ content transfer.  I can probably get that for free online. Think signposting, exciting, questioning, sharing research, exemplifying, storytelling and bringing together a learning event [and no doubt many other things other than ‘reading slides’]. Then we are engaging.

The end of deficit thinking 

So where does all this leave me … thinking that if we want engagement, we need to put down a deficit approach and reconnect with the unique energy, passion and inquisitiveness of our students which sits along their rightful ability to make choices that are right for their whole self. We need to remember that teaching is a relational business – a very human connection – so perhaps the place to start with engagement is by seeking to respect and understand the uniquely complex experiences and priorities of our students. Doing so might just be a source of joy and energy. We may need to consider whether the level of emphasis that faculty place on assessment serves students well. And finally, we ourselves need to stay curious and engage with the vast and varied landscape of exciting new knowledge to help learners to navigate and work with this. Content is not King – curiosity and connection are surely what matter most. If we ourselves are not current, inquiring, and keen to learn – how can we excite these features in others.  

This [my] thinking isn’t new – it’s more neatly summarised in this extract from Amy Antongiovanni’s A Poet-Teacher’s Minifesto  

“Listen to your students. Listen as though you were walking the streets of a strange city at night. Watch closely as you listen. They are your teachers. Imagine each of them as an instrument, unique and essential to the whole. Play their notes lightly and with caution, as though from their song, you could tease out information from a foreign culture, learning its tastes, manners, myths and fears. Ask your students challenging questions. When they answer, imagine you are the conductor and they, the composers of an orchestra. Study their melodies slowly and with patience. Let harmonies evolve organically and rearrange the dissonance….

“Be gracious. Their lives are harder than yours.  Share with them your passion for learning, your love for the subject. Be the aspen that sprouts new shoots from underground, your roots will become their trunks”. 

I’m writing all of this through a lens of optimism – knowing that the daily reality of seeking to motivate students is challenging. I am putting the optimism down to the lengthening UK days and some hope that spring is on its way!

Ref: Amy Antongiovanni’s A Poet-Teacher’s Minifesto taken from Quinlan, Kathleen M. (2016) How Higher Education Feels: Commentaries on Poems That Illuminate Emotions in Learning and Teaching (Imagination and Praxis: Criticality and Creativity in Education and Educational Research) (p. 259). SensePublishers. Kindle Edition.