Presented by Dr. Ernesto Grio of the University of Asia and the Pacific (UA&P) School of Education (SED) mannrentoy@gmail.com

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Challenges & Strategies in
Engaging Students
Back to School, Back to Excellence
Teacher Development Program
Inspiration
At its core, teaching
is emotional work.
David Rose, CAST
Key Question
How do I engage my students to facilitate
learning and promote their well-being?
Module Objectives
• Assess the importance of engagement in
learning
• Understand the key areas of engaging
students in learning
• Situate student engagement in the
context of online & distance education
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An Important Reminder
• Students are the direct recipient of the
learning experiences our new curriculum
enables. So, who are they? What do they
think and feel about school? What do
they say about the processes and
content of their learning? Whiting, J. (2021). Student-centered learning by design.
Libraries Unlimited.
Motivation to Learn
Jere Brophy
• The level of enthusiasm
and the degree to which
students invest attention
and effort in learning. Blakely, E.
F. (2010). Student engagement techniques. Jossey-Bass.
What are my
objectives?
One Minute Chalk Talk
• Setting the stage for an
in-depth discussion
Before we take a look at the strategies…
Focus on Thinking
• In an era in which students can “google”
much of the world’s knowledge on a
smart phone, an argument can be made
that the outcomes of modern schooling
should place a greater emphasis on
trans-disciplinary skills. McTighe, J. (2019). An introduction to performance tasks. Defined
Learning.
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Actively Thinking & Choice
• Engaged students are actively
involved in learning, and not merely
passive observers.
• Engaged students willingly adopt
strategies that lead to deeper and
meaningful learning. Teague, C. M. & Gardner, D. E. (2018). Engaging students in
physical chemistry. American Chemical Society.
• Importance of
engagement in
learning
One Minute Exchange of Notes
What is Motivation?
• The term motivation is derived from the
Latin verb movere, which means to
move.
• In other words, motivational theories
attempt to answer questions about what
gets individuals moving (energization)
and toward what activities or tasks. Pintrich, P. R.
(2003). A motivational science perspective on the role of student motivation in learning and teaching contexts. Educational Psychology.
What is Engagement?
• Students’ dynamic participation and
co-participation in recognition of
opportunity and purpose in completing
a specific learning task. Ng, C., Bartlett, B., & Elliott, S. N. (2018). Empowering
engagement. Springer International Publishing AG.
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Findings on Engagement
• Intrinsically motivated are more likely to
become engaged in learning
• Not challenged often demonstrate lower
degrees of engagement in learning
• Motivation also strengthens resilience, which
is essential for effective engagement with
learning Zhang, Z. & McNamara, O. (2018). Undergraduate student engagement. Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
Translation into Learning
• The characteristics of engagement include effort,
vigor, intensity, enthusiasm and the amount of
energy invested in behavior. Nagabushan, P.(2018). Engaging adolescentstudentsincontemporaryclassrooms.IGIGlobal.
What are my
engagement
strategies?
Reflection Time
Two Minutes
Engage Our
Students
• What are the
key areas we
need to
address?
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First Three Areas Key Areas
• Building a classroom community
• Role of emotions in engagement
• Minimizing classroom threats
• Building a classroom
community
Guiding
Principle
I belong to my
community of
learning.
Academic Optimism
• When the class’s physical and emotional
energy is high and flush with hope and
optimism, students try harder and enjoy the
learning more. Teachers with a strong class
climate model a passion for learning, and their
students buy into it. Jensen, E.(2013). Engaging studentswithpovertyinmind.AssociationforSupervisionandCurriculum
Development.
Idea of Warm Demander
• But wait…
• Care for the person without insistence
on performance is academic neglect. Quate, S. &
McDermott, J.(2009). Clock watchers.Heinemann.
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Work in a Group
• Students took “ownership of their
learning” because they were
contributing to some higher purpose
and playing on a team. If they didn’t
keep up, they would hurt not just
themselves but the success of their
group. Bain, K. (2021). Super courses. Princeton University Press.
“Smell of
Practice”
How did I build
and sustain a
community of
learning?
One Minute
Strategy No. 1
• “Teach students to make haste slowly as
you cover and uncover the curriculum”
• Employ group processing
• Acknowledge the contributions of each
group member
Building a
classroom
community
Teaching Online: Learning Community
• The opportunity for collaboration lowers
the stakes on testing, reducing test
anxiety, and creating improved conditions
for learning. Using collaborative quizzes
as preparation for later testing has been
shown to lead to more positive student
attitudes about both the subject matter
and their peers. Brennan, J. (2021). Engaging learners through Zoom. Jossey-Bass.
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Activating Prior Knowledge
What is the role of emotions in student
engagement? 1 minute
• Role of emotions in
engagement
Guiding
Principle
I am passionate
about learning.
Teaching Students not Content
• Responsibility for teaching a room full of
children who may not have mastered
certain social and emotional skills and
that it is in the best interest of all
teachers and all students to provide
social and emotional support for the
sake of student success. Mullen, G. (2020). Creating a self-directed learning
environment. Corwin.
Research Tells Us
• The practical reason to carefully attend to
the emotional climate of a classroom is
because emotion has the power to enhance
or inhibit learning. It's an established
aspect of sound pedagogy, contributing to
memory formation and positively affecting
student engagement. Frey, N., Fisher, D., & Smith, D. (2019). All learning is social and emotional.
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Emotions & Learning
• Poor emotion regulation interferes with the
very cognitive processes that are needed to
attend to instruction, remember key concepts,
and plan to complete homework—the ability
to sustain attention, memory, and planning. Merrell, K.
W. & Gueldner, B.A.(2010). Social and emotional learninginthe classroom.The GuilfordPress.
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Type of
Emotion
Academic Emotions
• Activity-related emotions, such as
enjoyment or boredom during
learning
• Outcome related emotions, such as
hope and pride related to success, or
anxiety, hopelessness, and shame
related to failure Wentzel, K. R. & Miele, D. B., Eds. (2016). Handbook of motivation at school.
Routledge.
Need More
Convincing
Problem-Solving
Situations
• Positive mood is
associated with
increased flexibility of
thinking; in essence,
where insight is
needed to solve a
problem, positive
mood is better. Churches, R, Dommett, E., &
Devonshire, I. (2017). Neuroscience for teachers. Crown House Publishing Ltd.
Strategy No. 2
• “You have to know your students
because they matter a lot.”
• Know their nicknames
• Make eye contact and smile
• ‘Waste’ time with them
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Role of
emotions in
engagement
Teaching Online: Role of Emotions
• Making sure that feedback is personal,
not generic, can build trust and respect
by communicating that you've
not simply looked for the correct
response, but you noticed the individual
effort put in by the student. Lemov, D. (2020). Teaching in the online
classroom. Jossey-Bass.
• What is a “safe” learning
environment?
One Minute Reflexive Thinking
• Minimizing
classroom threats
Guiding
Principle
I feel safe in
my classes.
Classroom That They Need
• When students are engaged and motivated
and feel minimal stress, information flows
freely through the affective filter in the
amygdala and they achieve higher levels of
cognition, make connections, and experience
“aha” moments. Frazier, N. & Mehle, D. (2013). Activators.Educatorsfor Social Responsibility.
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Students Who Behave Kindly
• Secondary students who are more prosocial
than their classmates have higher GPAs and
higher standardized test scores and are more
invested in school.
• Prosocial students, from 1st to 12th grade,
have higher achievement than students who
are not prosocial. Bergin, C. (2018). Designing a prosocial classroom. W. W. Norton & Co.
Promote Student Success
• Instructional Tasks
• Learner understanding
• Learner control
• Should be achievable
• Promote learner autonomy Reid, G. (2007). Motivatinglearnersinthe classroom.Paul
ChapmanPublishing.
Strategy No. 3
• “You have to try your best to build a
strong personal relationship with
your students”.
• Encourage them especially positive
behaviors such as exerting one’s best
effort
Teaching Online: Safe Environment
• Students need to know that their
teachers really care about them as
individuals and have their best academic
and social interests at heart. Students
also want to know that their teachers are
true to their word and are reliable. Fisher, D., Frey, N., &
Hattie, J. (2021). The distance learning playbook. Corwin.
Recall: First Three Areas
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Exchange
Notes
One Minute
Big Idea
• Building a classroom community
• Role of emotions in engagement
• Minimizing classroom threats
• “Who meets whom,
and when”
Next
Three
Areas
Go Back to
My List
Initial list of
engagement strategies
Second Three Areas Key Areas
• Balancing rigor and joy in learning
• Building learner self-efficacy
• Honoring learner choice
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• Balancing rigor &
joy in learning
Guiding
Principle
I enjoy learning
my lessons.
Children are the
Curriculum
• Teachers will have pages and
pages of curriculum documents
issued to them by the body
governing education in their
system, yet they must find a way
to create a relationship between
those pages and their students. Yee, B.,
Sliwka, A., Rautiainen(2018).Engagingadolescentlearner.Palgrave MacMillan.
Teach the Concepts
• Students retain the factual information
longer because the use of the
conceptual lens requires them to
process intellectually at a deeper level.
• Furthermore, because students are
invited to bring their own thinking to
the factual study, they are better able
to make personal meaning. Erickson, H. L., Lanning, L. A., & French, R.
(2017). Concept-based curriculum and instruction for the thinking classroom. Corwin.
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Role of
“Breaks”
• Research indicates that students learn better
with brain breaks, short bursts of activity that
enhance blood flow and send oxygen to the
brain.
• Studies prove that physical activity improves
test scores in core subjects such as math,
science, English, and world studies Zeffren, E. (2017). Motivating minds.
Rowman & Littlefield, Inc.
“Down in the
Trenches”
How did I balance
joy and rigor in
my classes?
One Minute: Looking Back
Strategy No. 4
• “You have to sweat the small stuff”.
• Think about cognitive engagement with
a focus on transfer and meaning making
• But also think about emotional
engagement with a focus on ownership.
Balancing
rigor and
joy
Teaching Online: Rigor and Joy
• Students highly value faculty interaction in
online forums, and that the quality of
faculty interaction can have a positive
impact on peer-to-peer interaction.
• In other words, instructors who interact
regularly in the discussion board and
model good online discussion practice can
enhance the learning experience of their
students. Darby, F. & Lang, J. (2019). Small teaching online. Jossey-Bass.
• Building learner
self-efficacy
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Guiding
Principle
I am
empowered to
accomplish
the tasks and
requirements.
Learner’s Identity
• Formed by how they want to be seen by
others, and by how they are seen by others in
these contexts. In the end, the learner’s
identity, which is often based on perceptions,
contributes to what one can or cannot do as a
learner. Opitz, M. E. & Ford, M. P.(2014). Engaging mindsinthe classroom.AssociationforSupervisionandCurriculumDevelopment.
How can
teachers
help?
Limited Capacity
• A most important idea in the
science of learning is that
people can process only a small
amount of material at any one
time. These limitations on
working memory capacity have
important implications for how
learning works. Myer, R. E. (2010). Applying the science of learning.
Pearson.
Cognitive
Load
Theory
• As instructional designers, we need to
design learning experiences to reduce
the load on students’ working memory
to help them more adequately process
information. Eaton, M. (2020). The perfect blend. International Society for Technology in Education.
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Strategy No. 5
• “You have to develop student’s
positive disposition towards
learning”.
• Use formative assessment strategies
or teacher directed opportunities to
respond
Building
learner
self-
efficacy
Teaching Online: Learner Efficacy
• An important early development step is the
creation of a document called a course map,
which is a formal, module-by-module
specification of the key learning objectives,
learning activities, and content components,
such as readings, assessments, and
assignments. Hillman, D., Schudy, & Temkin, A.(2021). Bestpracticesfor administeringonline programs.Routledge.
• Honoring learner
choice
Guiding Principle
I have a voice in my class and the teacher listens to me.
Fullan’s Challenge
• Posed the question ‘what would
happen if we treated the student as
someone whose opinion mattered?’
Lygo-Baker, S., Kinchin, I.M., & Winstone, N.E.(2019). Engagingstudentvoicesinhighereducation.Palgrave MacMillan.
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So how do
we do it?
Playing the
Whole Game
• A metaphor to describe the
kinds of holistic education we
need to be providing young
people that may be useful to
them in their later lives.
• Developing learners who are
resourceful and able to
transfer their learning from
one context to another Lucas, B. & Spencer, E.
(2018). Developing tenacity. Crown House Publishing Ltd.
Learner’s Contributions
• Students who are closely involved in assessment
procedures and personal planning related to their
learning needs are found to become more accurate
in making judgements about their own performance
and also become more focused upon classroom
activity. Rose, R. & Shevlin(2010).Countme in!JessicaKingsleyPublisher.
Strategy No. 6
• “You have to respect each individual
learner in your classroom”.
• Learner choice is important
• Teach the lessons using an empowering
approach.
Teaching Online: Student Voice
• The relevance, meaning and/or importance of
the activity emerged as the most salient
theme that supported autonomy.
• This indicates that learners found their
assignment a worthwhile and valuable
learning activity to engage in. Within this
major theme, two key sub-themes emerged.
These were: (1) relevance to their future role
and (2) personal relevance. Hartnett, M. (2016). Motivationinonline education.Springer.
Recall: Second Three Areas
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17. 17
Exchange
Notes
One Minute
Big Idea
• Balancing rigor and joy in learning
• Building learner self-efficacy
• Honoring learner choice
• “You write, I read, We
create”
Key Question
How do I engage my students to facilitate learning
and promote their well-being?
Open
the Floor
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