1+Session+Overview

=​ Explori​ng Student Engage​ment = The "Exploring Student Engagement" session at the 2010 Reaching and Teaching Conference was presented by Dr. Sharon Friesen and Candace Saar of the Galileo Educational Network at the University of Calgary.

The focus of the session was on the //What did you do in school today?// research project that Dr. Friesen, Galileo, and the Canadian Education Association (CEA) had recently conducted on student engagement. In this presentation, Friesen and Saar shared research, findings, and their ideas on how student engagement is a major factor in determining student success in school learning environments.

This page will provide an overview of the session content, highlight what may have been missed, and provide a framework for the rest of the wiki where we will expand upon the key elements of intellectual engagement.

=__Session Overview__:=

//The extent to which students identify with and value schooling outcomes, have a sense of belonging at school, participate in academic and non-academic activities, strive to meet the formal requirements of schooling, and make a serious personal investment in learning.//

The 3 Elements of Student Engagement:


The 3 elements of student engagement, social, academic, and intellectual engagement, are reflected in various amounts in our students, as represented by the overlapping bubbles in the diagram below. The size and overlap of each 'engagement bubble' varies in our students, but the goal is to make all of these areas as large and as integrated as possible.



 The emphasis was placed on Intellectual Engagement as the primary area of engagement that we can influence through instructional practices, design, assessment, and classroom environment. 

Intellectual Engagement to meet the "__21st Century Competencies__" of our students:


 * Communicative, ethical, and cross cultural competence
 * Problem solving, problem posing
 * Interdisciplinary thinking
 * Creativity and innovation
 * Critical thought and decision making
 * Collaboration
 * Technological competence

The Instructional Challenge is in teaching, developing, and supporting learning in a way that challenges students and keeps them engaged, or in a state of "Flow", based upon their own skill development and level of mastery.



This perspective of student engagement is largely based upon the scaffolding approaches and the Zone of Proximal Development models and research by Vygotsky, Sawyer, and Greeno.



=What was missed?=

Sharon Friesen and Candace Saar presented an excellent session on student engagement. They shared their observations and research of the //What did you do in school today?// project and linked their ideas and recommendations for teaching to other established theories, while fleshing out their presentation with video examples and experiences of "teaching for intellectual engagement".

However, one area that warrants more focus is in the key strategies to teaching for intellectual engagement that were presented by Friesen and Saar. We see this as an opportunity to expand on these crucial elements of student engagement, so we have chosen to adopt these points as the framework for this wiki.

In the following wiki pages we will examine student engagement by exploring the connections to Design for Learning, Authentic Learning, Assessment for Learning, and Building Relationships.