Physical Evidence of Engagement
The most common way of gauging student engagement inside a classroom, due to its qualitative element, is physical evidence. Richard Strong writes, “[…] students who are engaged exhibit 3 characteristics: (1) they are attracted to their work, (2) they persist in their work despite challenges and obstacles, and (3) they take visible delight in accomplishing their work.” (Strong, 1995) While all three of these are observable qualities, the second two are the most qualitative. It is the third element written in that quote I’d like to focus on in this section. Things like; raising one’s hand, sitting up straight, asking and answering questions, active listening (as evident by relevant questions, note taking, etc), engagement in group work, and eye contact are but a few methods researchers have historically used to gauge engagement in classrooms. Through my own personal research I have found that while physical evidence of student engagement, such as that listed above, are often times a good determinant of genuine engagement in a classroom, they cannot be used as the sole means. On multiple occasions I kept count of participation (1) (2) in my classroom. Things like eye contact, answering questions and participation in discussions were all counted as positive engagement while things like lack of eye contact, off topic discussions and head down were among the negative reflections of engagement. To begin with, these classes were very discussion driven. While this opens the door for students to participate regularly, not all students enjoy large group discussions. Furthermore, not all students are auditory learners or external processors thereby all but eliminating their chances of actively participating, as seen through physical, quantitative evidence.
When assessing student engagement solely by physical evidence, quiet students are at a severe disadvantage because their natural tendencies, which may be categorized as non-physical evidence (I go into this in detail in the next section), can easily be mistaken for a lack of engagement. “Desiree”, is a good example of a student who is an internal processor. On this classroom participation chart (charted by an unbiased observer) “Desiree” has a bunch of question marks next to different observation times. The question mark represents neither positive nor negative physical engagement. According to this chart, any engagement not seen as positive could be considered negative under the premonition that no engagement is negative engagement. But that is not the case here. “Desiree” is a quiet student so the fact that there are positive engagement elements recorded as well as question marks shows that she is engaged, just not always in a physically evident way.
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On the other side of the physical evidence of engagement spectrum is “Tien”, a strong contributor in class. "Tien", like "Desiree", always pre-reads to prepare for class. These two students differ in that "Tien" volunteers to answer questions in class as is evident by the classroom discussion chart. In his case, physical evidence IS a good indicator of engagement because he is a "physically active learner” so things like: eye contact, participation and active discussion are good determinants of his engagement in the lesson. The difference in these two students suggests that physical evidence can be but one means of assessing engagement in a classroom.
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Another factor in the discussion of physical evidence of engagement as a means of assessing student engagement is the location of the teacher at the time the evidence is assessed. Using the classroom discussion chart as an example, it is evident that students’ participation levels fluctuate based on the location the teacher is in. As can be seen from the chart, there are increased levels of participation in the middle and back parts of the room because I had both instructional elements working here, direct line of sight and physical proximity. When the elements of proximity and direct line of sight are working together, the students are encouraged to participate more. I found the same to be true when I changed locations to the right side of the room. As seen by the primary field of view lines drawn from this location, the students on the left side of the room are actively engaged in conversation most. Again, caution must be taken here in that while the teacher’s location often times encourages participation, it does not necessarily mean it is genuine engagement. For instance seat numbers 26 and 27 participated often but only while I was in location “A”. It would be presumptuous to immediately jump to the conclusion that they only participate because the teacher is focused in that direction. Another explanation could be that because the teacher is focused in that direction, the students occupying seats' 26 and 27 hands were the first seen thereby giving these two seat locations a better opportunity to participate. But that doesn’t seem to be the case when taking into account seat number 4. At no point during the lesson do I as the teacher place direct attention on seat number 4 and yet, the student in seat 4 participates more than many of the students receiving a lot of attention (reflected on the chart as the shaded area in the middle of the room) as reflected in the tally marks. This supports the idea that students’ participation, SOLELY, when the teacher is looking in their direction or is located in close proximity, often times is NOT genuine engagement but a manifested urgency to "say something" or stay out of trouble.
Just as discussed earlier, participation in a classroom, regardless of factors (like teacher location) can be a good determinant of genuine student engagement but should not, nor ever, be the sole means of determining student engagement.
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Just as discussed earlier, participation in a classroom, regardless of factors (like teacher location) can be a good determinant of genuine student engagement but should not, nor ever, be the sole means of determining student engagement.
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