Nick Zepke

Improving Student Engagement: Ten Proposals for Action.

Since the 1980s an extensive research literature has investigated how to improve student success in higher education focusing on student outcomes such as retention, completion and employability. A parallel research programme has focused on how students engage with their studies and what they, institutions and educators can do to enhance their engagement, and hence success. This article reports on two syntheses of research literature on student engagement and how this can be enhanced. It first synthesizes 93 research studies from ten countries to develop a conceptual organizer for student engagement that consists of four perspectives identified in the research: student motivation; transactions between teachers and students; institutional support; and engagement for active citizenship. Secondly, the article synthesizes findings from these perspectives as ten propositions for improving student engagement in higher education. It concludes by identifying some limitations with the conceptual organizer and one suggestion for developing a more integrated approach to student engagement.

Integration and adaptation Approaches to the student retention and achievement puzzle

Tertiary institutions are under increasing pressure to improve student outcomes such as retention, persistence and completion. In 2002, the New Zealand Ministry of Education commissioned a team of Massey University researchers to conduct a best evidence synthesis of literature on how institutions might improve student outcomes. Our study found two different discourses on this. One predominates, centring on what institutions do to fit students into their existing cultures. The other is still emerging and challenges the dominant discourse. Rather than requiring students to fit the existing institutional culture, it suggests that cultures be adapted to better fit the needs of increasingly diverse students. This article has four sections. First, a survey of background literature introduces competing theoretical approaches to outcomes research. Second, we explain how the survey was conducted. Third, we summarize the findings of 146 research studies. Finally we raise some challenges for practice based on the emerging discourse.

Being Learner Centred: One Way to Improve Student Retention?.

The research literature on how to retain students until they graduate in post‐compulsory education is voluminous and long‐standing. However, a unified theory of retention remains elusive. Instead a variety of explanations and approaches has been developed. This article uses one theoretical construct to make sense of the findings of a survey of students enrolling for a second time in seven post‐compulsory institutions in New Zealand. The theoretical construct is based on an adaptation discourse that puts the interests of diverse students at the centre of teaching and institutional processes. The results of the survey suggest that in New Zealand retention rates are similar to those reported in other studies, that there is support for the learner focus promoted in the adaptation discourse, and that being learner centred could assist retention.

Improving student outcomes in higher education: New Zealand teachers’ views on teaching students from diverse backgrounds

The research literature on student retention is voluminous and longstanding. However, a unified theory of retention remains elusive; instead a variety of explanations and approaches have been developed. This article uses two discourses, integration and adaptation, to make sense of the findings from a survey of teachers who taught students enrolled for the first time in seven tertiary institutions in New Zealand. While the article reports results from the survey, it focuses particularly on how tertiary teachers understand diversity; whether and how they accommodate diversity in their teaching. It offers some critical reflections on these teachers’ views about diversity.

Engaging Students in Learning: A Review of a Conceptual Organiser.

Student engagement in learning is a complex process influenced by many factors. This article introduces a conceptual organiser developed from a review of the literature. It captures four key perspectives – motivation and agency, transactional engagement, institutional support and active citizenship – and suggested indicators for each perspective. Data from a project researching student engagement with first‐time enrolled students in Aotearoa New Zealand is then used to review the conceptual organiser. Findings show that the four perspectives were all evident, though some indicators were more clearly supported than others. As a result of the evaluation, changes were made to the organiser. We argue that it has value as a way for teachers and institutions to inform and evaluate their efforts to engage students in learning.

Beyond hard outcomes: ‘soft’ outcomes and engagement as student success

This paper questions current policy discourses that equate student success with hard outcomes like retention, completion and employment. It offers another view, one that uses ‘soft’ outcomes and student engagement literature to widen our understanding of student success. In the paper, we first draw on literature to explore student engagement, usually understood as a means to achieve success, and ‘soft’ outcomes as acceptable student outcomes, as success. We present possible indicators for these forms of success and a matrix of factors which influence such success. We then examine these ideas using data gathered from a project that investigated success as experienced by post-school foundation learners in Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The findings suggest that the ideas have value. Finally, we identify some implications for teachers, arguing that, contrary to some current views, all four quadrants in the matrix are the business of teachers.

Student engagement research in higher education: questioning an academic orthodoxy

This article suggests that student engagement research is not often investigated critically. It attempts to change this. After briefly outlining a conceptual framework for student engagement, it explores three critical questions about it. First, it asks whether in trying to be all things in teaching and learning, student engagement focuses too much on an engaged generic learner that neglects the impact of specific contexts. Second, it asks whether engagement research, with its focus on identifying engaging classroom practices, has come to emphasise pedagogy at the expense of curriculum, which is a more philosophical and political understanding of purposes, knowledge and values in higher education. It asks, third, whether student engagement has gained its high profile because it aligns with and supports a neoliberal ideology that has an instrumental view of knowledge and emphasises performativity and accountability.

A Future for Adult Lifelong Education in Aotearoa New Zealand: Neoliberal or Cosmopolitan?.

This paper sets out to answer two questions ‘Given the policy settings for lifelong learning for adults in Europe and much of the western world, what are the policy settings and experiences in Aotearoa New Zealand?’ and ‘Will the future of adult lifelong education there be neoliberal or cosmopolitan?’ The article first examines some of the roots of post‐compulsory education policy in Aotearoa New Zealand over the last 30 years. In particular it considers trends in philosophies and practices about educating adults as well as some of the varied policy discourses prevailing over this period. Next it reviews the ever‐changing policy landscape, in particular unresolved tensions between social and economic goals, the acquisition of skills for learning for living and dialogic social purpose learning, and attainment of social cohesion and recognition of diversity. Finally the paper attempts to preview how these tensions may play out in an uncertain future.

Threshold concepts and student engagement: Revisiting pedagogical content knowledge:

This article revisits the notion that to facilitate quality learning requires teachers in higher education to have pedagogical content knowledge. It constructs pedagogical content knowledge as a teaching and learning space that brings content and pedagogy together. On the content knowledge side, it suggests that threshold concepts, akin to a portal that opens up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about a subject, are useful in quality learning. On the pedagogy side, it employs student engagement as a useful proxy for identifying what happens in a learning environment to achieve quality learning. This article asks what fresh insights might this particular conceptualization of pedagogical content knowledge afford teacher education and teacher development in achieving quality learning in higher education. After outlining characteristics of threshold concepts and student engagement, it brings together the contributions these concepts make to pedagogical content knowledge before detailing some fresh insights afforded by the synthesis.

Linking academic emotions and student engagement: mature-aged distance students’ transition to university

Research into both student engagement and student emotions is increasing, with widespread agreement that both are critical determinants of student success in higher education. Less researched are the complex, reciprocal relationships between these important influences. Two theoretical frameworks inform this paper: Pekrun’s taxonomy of academic emotions and Kahu’s conceptual framework of student engagement. The prospective qualitative design aims to allow a rich understanding of the fluctuating and diverse emotions that students experience during the transition to university and to explore the relationships between academic emotions and student engagement. The study follows 19 mature-aged (aged 24 and over) distance students throughout their first semester at university, using video diaries to collect data on their emotional experiences and their engagement with their study. Pre and post-semester interviews were also conducted. Findings highlight that different emotions have different links to engagement: as important elements in emotional engagement, as inhibitors of engagement and as outcomes that reciprocally influence engagement. There are two key conclusions. First, student emotions are the point of intersection between the university factors such as course design and student variables such as motivation and background. Second, the flow of influence between emotions, engagement, and learning is reciprocal and complex and can spiral upwards towards ideal engagement or downwards towards disengagement and withdrawal.