An International Study of Student Engagement: An EaGER Grant

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This research project explores student motivation and engagement in high school biology, chemistry, and physics classrooms and what factors foster or hinder it. It will contribute to the scientific literature by refining definitions of what is meant by engagement, how it should be measured, what effects it has on science learning, and how teachers can use this information to improve their instruction and, as a result, student learning. The project builds on an earlier collaboration between researchers at Michigan State University and those in Finland. The project is funded by the Research on Education and Learning (REAL) program that supports fundamental research at the cutting edge of what we know about teaching and learning, whether based in schools or out of the classroom. The research will involve five US high schools with 20 teachers and a similar number in Finland in an iterative design of classroom instruction, student assessment, data analysis, and then the redesign of classroom instruction and analysis. They will collect data obtained with new technology using the experience sampling method (ESM), teacher and student surveys and interviews. The teams, which includes teachers, will continuously develop and refine classroom tools for analyzing data to improve student engagement. The immediate goal is that teachers will have an improved ability to engage in formative assessment of students, and, as a result, student engagement and learning should increase. The instructional materials developed should be generalizable to other contexts.