If you watch this scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, you’ll notice that even in the
midst of a boring lesson, none of the students are misbehaving.
They’re quiet.
Nobody’s toss spitballs or playing paper football or checking their cell phones – mostly
because cell phones back then were the size of a brick.
Most of the students are following the rules.
They aren’t engaged in the learning, but what are they?
Some seem to be retreating.
A few seem to be playing the game of school.
But nobody seems committed to the learning.
Here’s where Schlecty’s Levels of Engagement becomes helpful.
It provides a useful framework for thinking about what it means for students to be genuinely
engaged in their learning.
Schlecty defined it this way, “Engagement is active.
It requires the students to be attentive as well as in attendance; it requires the students
to be committed to the task and find some inherent value in what he or she is being
asked to do.
The engaged student not only does the task assigned but also does the task with enthusiasm
and diligence.”
Schlecty focused on two core areas of a task.
The first is attention.
This is the idea that a student should be focused on the specific task, without being
distracted.
The second is commitment.
This is the idea that a student should find the task intrinsically motivating and challenging
and therefore work toward mastering it.
In 2002, Phillip Schlecty developed a framework for thinking about student engagement based
on these two core ideas of attention and commitment.
At the bottom, you have rebellion, which involves diverted attention and no commitment to the
task.
This is the student who seems to be acting out and causing disruptions.
As a result, they fail to learn from the task.
Next, you have retreatism, with no attention and low commitment.
Unlike the rebellion, the student in retreat is not actively disrupting the learning but
instead seems to be checked out.
This student is often distracted and emotionally withdrawn from the task.
As a result, this student learns little or nothing from the task.
At the next level, you have ritual compliance (which was originally called passive compliance).
This involves both low attention and low commitment.
Unlike retreatism, a ritually compliant student isn’t completely checked but instead is
doing the bare minimum to avoid confrontation.
This student will learn at a low level from this task and will not retain it over time.-3
Next is strategic compliance.
Often, this looks like engagement because a student might be performing at a high level.
Here, the student has high attention on the task but a low commitment.
This student is playing the game of school, focused on things like grades, parental approval,
rewards, or class rank.
But the learning isn’t intrinsically rewarding.
As a result, this student will often learn at a high level but fail to retain the learning
or transfer it to a new context.
Finally, you have engagement.
This requires both high attention and high commitment.
Here, a student completely buys in out of a strong instrinsic motivation by meaning,
choice, and challenge.
This student will continue focusing even when the task gets more complex and challenging
and often will choose to learn it even when it is ungraded.
This student will learn it at a deep level and transfer it to new contexts.
This is why it’s important that we, as teachers, focus on how to make the subject intrinsically
engaging for all students by tapping into curiosity, creativity, and purpose.
When this happens, students are more likely to grow into passionate, life-long learners.