So for this week, I was only able to look review one article because I was busy finishing my Resource list, blog posts, and the wiki. Here's my quick review of:
Yonezawa, S., Jones, M., & Joselowsky, F. (2009). Youth engagement in high schools: Developing a multidimensional, critical approach to improving engagement for all students. Journal of Educational Change, 10(2/3), 191-209. doi:10.1007/s10833-009-9106-1.
I chose this article because I'm focusing my AR on improving my students' engagement. To do this, I need a firm understanding, or as firm of an understanding as one can get, on the current definition and views on engagement. What I gleaned from this article was that the definition and research methods associated with egagement up this point do not really help us engage our students. Up to now, the focus has been on academic engagement, but that is not the only way we have to engage students. They are hormonal adolescents - they need to be engaged emotionally and socially while at school as well. It's so interesting to look at students after reading this article. Students who perform well in school engage more in the academic aspects (teacher's pets, nerds, brainiacs), while those who couldn't care less about their grades are fully engaged in the social and emotional aspects (class clowns, party animals, queen bees). Our goal needs to be to bring all students to engagement on all three levels.
How do we accomplish this? Go to the source. If you want to know what someone wants, the best way to find out is ask them. The authors encourage educators and researchers alike to embrace the student voice when it comes to finding how to engage students, and they back this up by involving students in their own research studies (3 to the date of this article's publication). By asking students what they want, we can usually find out what they need.
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