Defining and Measuring Engagement and Learning in Science: Conceptual, Theoretical, Methodological, and Analytical Issues

Abstract

Engagement is one of the most widely misused and overgeneralized constructs found in the educational, learning, instructional, and psychological sciences. The articles in this special issue represent a wide range of traditions and highlight several key conceptual, theoretical, methodological, and analytical issues related to defining and measuring engagement. All the approaches exemplified by the contributors show different ways of conceptualizing and measuring engagement and demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of each method to significantly augment our current understanding of engagement. Despite the numerous issues raised by the authors of this special issue and in my commentary, I argue that focusing on process data will lead to advances in models, theory, methods, analytical techniques, and ultimately instructional recommendations for learning contexts that effectively engage students.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Gale Sinatra and Doug Lombardi for their invitation to write the commentary and their comments and feedback on this article. Lastly, I would also like to thank Clark Chinn for his feedback on this commentary.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation, the Institute of Education Sciences, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.