1. Student engagement –
examining its foundations
and fruitful ways of
putting it into practice
Colin Bryson and Emily Williams:
Newcastle University
colin.bryson@ncl.ac.uk

2. Goals
 Research, evidence and practice about
holistic student engagement
 Exploring the notion of ‘partnership’
 Including both staff and student
perspectives!
 Examples and issues about putting it into
practice
Engagement and partnership

3. A very short introduction to SE
 Roots (Becker, 1961: Pace, 1979: Astin, 1977: Chickering and
Gamson, 1987: Pascarella and Terenzini, 1991, 2005)
The impact of college on students
 A focus in USA on active classroom behaviours - (National Student
Survey on Engagement) – George Kuh
 Australia – the FYE…(McInnis, 1995) - Multi-dimensional
engagement (Krause and Coates, 2008) Convergence with US
thinking – the AUSSE
Engagement and partnership

4. A different form of student
evidence….
 Drawn from seven studies since 2003,
mainly qualitative
 Includes two longitudinal studies
 And one of these was the staff perspective
on SE
 Most recent work is about SE and
graduateness and SE and partnership
Engagement and partnership

5. A constructivist approach to SE
 SE is holistic and socially constructed
 Every student is an individual and different (Haggis, 2004)
 Engagement is a concept which encompasses the perceptions,
expectations and experience of being a student and the construction of
being a student in HE (Bryson and Hand, 2007).
 Engagement underpins learning and is the glue that binds it together – both
located in being and becoming. (Fromm, 1977)
 More than about doing/behaving and quantity
 SE is not amenable to measurement
 SE is dynamic and fluid
 SE is multidimensional, includes student’s whole lives and it is the
interaction and pattern that matters not any specific variable – avoid
reductionism
Engagement and partnership

6. Key influences on engagement
1. Student expectations and perceptions – match to the
‘personal project’ and interest in subject (Dubet -
ways of being a student)
2. Balances between challenge and appropriate
workload
3. Degrees of choice, autonomy, risk, and opportunities
for growth and enjoyment
4. Trust relationships
5. Communication and discourse
6. A sense of belonging and community
7. The salience of social networks
Engagement and partnership

7. A wider exploration of the lit
 Strong evidence base and critical perspective
from schools SE research
(Fredricks et al; Zyngier; Gibbs & Posskitt; Harris)
 Alienation, inertia/anomie and disengagement (Mann:
Krause)
 Professional formation and authentic learning (identity
projects) (Holmes; Reid and Solomonides)
 Intellectual development (Perry: Baxter Magolda:)
 Integration, belonging and community (Tinto: Kember:
Wenger and several others)
 Collective SE – but also participation and partnership
(Little et al: Bovill: Healey et al)
Engagement and partnership

8.  To meet regularly to discuss SE.
 To involve and work with students in partnership
 An early goal was to develop a concept map and set of principles that underpin the
promotion of SE
 To establish an annual conference drawing together leading edge work on SE - and
to feed into publication through journals and books. (Next conference– Sept 2013,
Nottingham)
 To gain funding to support these events and activities.
 To create a bank of useful resources for us to share.
 To facilitate communication between us (web, email network etc)
http://raise-network.ning.com/
Engagement and partnership

9. A revised definition of SE
 Student engagement is about what a student brings to
Higher Education in terms of goals, aspirations, value
and beliefs and how these are shaped and mediated by
their experience whilst a student. SE is constructed and
reconstructed through the lenses of the perceptions and
identities held by students and the meaning and sense a
student makes of their experiences and interactions. As
players and shapers of the educational context,
educators need to foster educational, purposeful SE to
support and enable students to learn in constructive and
powerful ways and realise their potential in education
and society.
Engagement and partnership

10. Engaging students - principles
 We should:
1. Foster student’s willingness and readiness to engage by enhancing their
self-belief
2. Embrace the point that students have diverse backgrounds, expectations,
orientations and aspirations – thus different ‘ways of being a student’, and
to welcome, respect and accommodate all of these in an inclusive way
3. Enable and facilitate trust relationships (between staff:students and
students:students) in order to develop a discourse with each and all
students and to show solidarity with them
4. Create opportunities for learning (in its broadest sense) communities so
that students can develop a sense of competence and belonging within
these communities
Engagement and partnership

11. 5. Teach in ways to make learning participatory, dialogic,
collaborative, authentic, active and critical
6. Foster autonomy and creativity, and offer choice and opportunities
for growth and enriching experiences in a low risk and safe setting
7. Recognise the impact on learning of non-institutional influences
and accommodate these
8. Design and implement assessment for learning with the aim to
enable students to develop their ability to evaluate critically the
quality and impact of their own work
9. Seek to negotiate and reach a mutual consensus with students on
managing workload, challenge, curriculum and assessment for
their educational enrichment – through a partnership model –
without diluting high expectations and educational attainment
10. Enable students to become active citizens and develop their social
and cultural capital
Engagement and partnership

12. A holistic approach to a degree
programme
 Combined Honours at Newcastle
 Diverse and complex
 Individuals doing unique degree
 Missing sense of identity/ belonging
 But few resources and so difficult to influence
the curriculum
So how to address?
Find a talented group with innovative ideas,
great energy and boundless enthusiasm
Engagement and partnership

13. Enhancing engagement in
Combined Honours
 Student representation:
 Empowerment- Student led, working groups
 Partnership
 Active agenda – providing solutions
 Success stories
 Defending the degree
 Combined Honours Week
 Curriculum co-design – new modules
 Redesign of transition
Engagement and partnership

14. Enhancing engagement in
Combined Honours
 Peer mentoring – social integration
 PASS scheme – academic integration
Engagement and partnership

15. Enhancing engagement in
Combined Honours
 Building community:
 Facilities
and spaces
 Social agenda – the CHS
 Joining it all up – events and
activities are shared and promoted
by all parties
 Challenging to keep it going…but
offers a host of opportunities that
never existed before.
Engagement and partnership

16. Students as partners
 A focus on the collective – student
representation – involvement in decision making
 As consumer (UK Government)
 Empowerment (QAA, HEA)
 As equals (Wenstone and the NUS)
 A focus on the individual
 Co-production(Neary)
 Module design (Bovill)
 Within modules
Engagement and partnership

17. Challenging issues
 What is role of the student union?
 Balancing the collective vs individual
 Can students take on all this responsibility
 How many want to? Should it be all?
 What impact on staff?
 What impact on the structures?
 Political or pedagogic?
Engagement and partnership