For more than two decades, the concept of student engagement has grown from simple attention in class to a construct comprised of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral components that embody and ...further develop motivation for learning. Similarly, the goals of student engagement have evolved from dropout prevention to improved outcomes for lifelong learning. This robust expansion has led to numerous lines of research across disciplines and are brought together clearly and comprehensively in the Handbook of Research on Student Engagement. The Handbook guides readers through the field's rich history, sorts out its component constructs, and identifies knowledge gaps to be filled by future research. Grounding data in real-world learning situations, contributors analyze indicators and facilitators of student engagement, link engagement to motivation, and gauge the impact of family, peers, and teachers on engagement in elementary and secondary grades. Findings on the effectiveness of classroom interventions are discussed in detail. And because assessing engagement is still a relatively new endeavor, chapters on measurement methods and issues round out this important resource. Topical areas addressed in the Handbook include: Engagement across developmental stages.Self-efficacy in the engaged learner.Parental and social influences on engagement and achievement motivation.The engaging nature of teaching for competency development.The relationship between engagement and high-risk behavior in adolescents.Comparing methods for measuring student engagement.An essential guide to the expanding knowledge base, the Handbook of Research on Student Engagement serves as a valuable resource for researchers, scientist-practitioners, and graduate students in such varied fields as clinical child and school psychology, educational psychology, public health, teaching and teacher education, social work, and educational policy. Sandra L. Christenson, Ph.D., is the Birkmaier Professor of Educational Leadership, Professor of Educational Psychology, and faculty member in the School Psychology Program at the University of Minnesota. Her research focuses on interventions that enhance engagement at school and with learning for marginalized students with and without disabilities. She is particularly interested in the identification of contextual factors that facilitate student engagement and increase the probability for student success in school, and the identification of the effect of family-school partnership variables. Amy L. Reschly, Ph.D., is an associate professor and training director in the School Psychology Program, Department of Educational Psychology Instructional Technology, at the University of Georgia. Areas of expertise include engagement and dropout prevention; working with families and schools to promote student success; and, Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM) and Problem-Solving. Cathy Wylie, Ph.D., is a Chief Researcher with the New Zealand Council for Educational Research. She has led the longitudinal Competent Learners project since 1993. Her research interests include the interaction between experiences and student development, and identifying policies that best support school capability to provide engaging and productive learning. Her research into policy includes the impact on schools and students of New Zealand national policies, including the shift to self-managed schools since 1989.
A review of relevant literatures led to the construction of a self-report instrument designed to measure two subtypes of student engagement with school: cognitive and psychological engagement. The ...psychometric properties of this measure, the Student Engagement Instrument (SEI), were assessed based on responses of an ethnically and economically diverse urban sample of 1931 ninth grade students. Factor structures were obtained using exploratory factor analyses (EFAs) on half of the dataset, with model fit examined using confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) on the other half of the dataset. The model displaying the best empirical fit consisted of six factors, and these factors correlated with expected educational outcomes. Further research is suggested in the iterative process of developing the SEI, and the implications of these findings are discussed.
In this article, family-school partnerships are discussed as a viable and essential way to increase the opportunities and supports for all students to enhance their learning progress and meet the ...recent demands of schooling inherent in accountability systems and most notably of Title I No Child Left Behind legislation. School psychologists are encouraged to make the family-school partnership a priority by collaborating with school personnel to (a) apply principles from systems-ecological theory to children's learning; (b) maintain an opportunity-oriented, persistent focus when working with youth and families living in challenging situations; and (c) attend to the process of partnering with families. Example opportunities for school psychologists to make this partnership a priority for children's academic, social, and emotional learning are delineated.
•Implementation fidelity is associated to Check & Connect’s outcomes.•Program components’ intervention fidelity is differentially associated with outcomes.•Implementation site and intervention ...context help understand these differences.
There are numerous school dropout prevention programs. However, few of them have undergone a rigorous implementation evaluation to understand their effects. This research presents two studies that evaluated the intervention fidelity and differential effects of Check & Connect (C&C), a targeted school dropout prevention program aimed at promoting student engagement and achievement. A total of 145 elementary school students (Study 1) and 200 secondary school students (Study 2) from two French-Canadian school boards (regional districts grouping elementary and secondary schools) received the C&C intervention for two years. In both studies, a clinical monitoring form was used to compare the intervention fidelity of each program component and active ingredient with what was initially planned. The relation between intervention fidelity and the effects of C&C on student engagement and achievement was analyzed using multiple linear regressions. Overall, the results show that intervention fidelity varies across elementary and secondary schools from one component to another and from one site to another. Furthermore, the association between the fidelity of each component and positive outcomes varies, depending on the implementation site. This evaluation supports the relevance of every component of C&C to favor engagement and academic achievement among at-risk elementary and secondary school students, while suggesting that the importance of certain program components may vary, depending on contextual influences on implementation and outcomes.
The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine the associations between the student–teacher relationship and outcomes for African American students who were behaviorally at-risk for referral to ...special education. Students were identified by their teachers as having behavior problems. Participants were 44 students and 25 teachers from two suburban and three urban elementary schools in a mid-western state. A multi-rater, multi-method approach was used. As teacher-reports of student–teacher relationship quality increased, there were also increases in positive social, behavioral, and engagement outcomes for students. Similarly, as student-reports of student–teacher relationship quality increased, there were increases in positive behavioral, engagement, and academic outcomes. Additional analyses of dyadic relationship patterns showed that as the relationship pattern improved (moving from negative concordance to discordance to positive concordance), there were increases in positive social, behavioral, and engagement outcomes for students. Implications for school practice are discussed.
•Implementation processes shed new light on program outcomes.•Implementation processes can act as either facilitators or barriers to implementation.•Implementation processes and the dynamics ...intervening between them help portray implementation experiences in four sites.
Many dropout prevention programs have been developed and validated in the past decades. Yet, little is known about the contextual factors influencing the implementation of these programs. Implementation processes, such as school principal leadership and governmental funding, have been identified for their influence on program implementation, but the mutual or dynamic influence of these processes is yet to be understood. This study examines the processes involved in the implementation of Check & Connect (C&C), a well-established targeted dropout prevention program validated in several countries that aims at promoting the development of a significant relationship between at-risk students and a mentor as a way to prevent school dropout.
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 mentors and coordinators directly involved in C&C implementation. Analyses were conducted in two subsequent steps: thematic analyses first helped identify implementation processes described by respondents, and then synthetic case studies allowed us to build the implementation stories of distinct sites. This last step was conducted using the Planned Change Framework.
This framework helped us to understand the complex dynamics of implementation processes in each site, which were associated with previously identified program outcomes, beyond implementation fidelity. Implications for future implementations of evidence-based programs in the school setting are discussed.
Preventing school dropout and promoting successful graduation is a national concern that poses a significant challenge for schools and educational communities working with youth at risk for school ...failure. Although students who are at greatest risk for dropping out of school can be identified, they disengage from school and drop out for a variety of reasons for which there is no one common solution. The most effective intervention programs identify and track youth at risk for school failure, maintain a focus on students' progress toward educational standards across the school years, and are designed to address indicators of student engagement and to impact enrollment status--not just the predictors of dropout. To leave no child behind, educators must address issues related to student mobility, alternate routes to school completion, and alternate time lines for school completion, as well as engage in rigorous evaluation of school-completion programs.
This study examined the engagement of students with learning disabilities and emotional disturbance and the relation of this engagement to school completion. Participants were parent-identified ...students with learning disabilities (LD) and emotional or behavioral disorders (EBD) and comparison groups of average-achieving peers and students without disabilities who dropped out or stayed in school. Comparisons of the engagement of students with LD or EBD and average-achieving peers showed significant differences (but small in terms of effect sizes) and indicated that students with LD or EBD reported less desirable engagement than their average-achieving peers. After accounting for achievement test scores, grade retention, and socioeconomic status, student engagement variables were significant predictors of school dropout and completion for students with LD or EBD and students without disabilities. Implications of these results in terms of the construct of student engagement and school dropout and future directions for research are discussed.
An important and previously unexplored body of esoteric ritual songs of the Tz'utujil Maya of Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala, the "Songs of the Old Ones" are a central vehicle for the transmission of ...cultural norms of behavior and beliefs within this group of highland Maya. Ethnomusicologist Linda O'Brien-Rothe began collecting these songs in 1966, and she has amassed the largest, and perhaps the only significant, collection that documents this nearly lost element of highland Maya ritual life.This book presents a representative selection of the more than ninety songs in O'Brien-Rothe's collection, including musical transcriptions and over two thousand lines presented in Tz'utujil and English translation. (Audio files of the songs can be downloaded from the UT Press website.) Using the words of the "songmen" who perform them, O'Brien-Rothe explores how the songs are intended to move the "Old Ones"—the ancestors or Nawals—to favor the people and cause the earth to labor and bring forth corn. She discusses how the songs give new insights into the complex meaning of dance in Maya cosmology, as well as how they employ poetic devices and designs that place them within the tradition of K'iche'an literature, of which they are an oral form. O'Brien-Rothe identifies continuities between the songs and the K'iche'an origin myth, the Popol Vuh, while also tracing their composition to the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries by their similarities with the early chaconas that were played on the Spanish guitarra española, which survives in Santiago Atitlán as a five-string guitar.
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