1. From Compliance to Engagement
Adapted from: Creating Great Schools: Six Critical Systems at the Heart of Educational Innovation (Jossey Bass Education Series, 2005 by Phillip C. Schlechty (2005) and a presentation by Debbie Draper, Curriculum Adviser, Barossa District, South Australia

2. Why engagement?

3. When the pace of change outside an organization is more rapid than the pace of change inside the organization, the future of the organization is at risk.

4. Moving forward with SACSA Strategy, 2006
All leaders know the proportion of learners actively engaged in their learning and the proportion performing at each curriculum standard in all learning areas.
Moving forward with SACSA Strategy, 2006

5. Early Years Literacy Program
Children demonstrate high levels of engagement in learning that promotes literacy achievement.

6. “Current goals for learning go beyond the basics and disciplinary knowledge to include the strategies, capacities, qualities, characteristics and values needed for successful living in the modern world.”
“Student Motivation & Engagement”
Schooling Issues Digest DEET

7. What is engagement?

8. There are five ways that students respond or adapt to school-related tasks and activities:
Engagement (High Attention and Commitment)
Strategic Compliance (High Attention and Low Commitment)
Ritual Compliance (Low Attention and Low Commitment)
Retreatism (No Attention and No Commitment)
Rebellion (Diverted Attention)

9. Engaged Students
Create
Evaluate
Analyze
Apply
Understand
Remember

10. Strategically Compliant Students
Create
Evaluate
Analyze
Apply
Understand
Recall and sometimes remember

11. Ritually Compliant Students
Create
Evaluate
Analyze
Apply
Understand

12. Retreatist and Rebels Learn little Develop negative attitudes
toward learning

13. Schools are designed to:
Produce Compliance
Exploit Engagement

14. From Good to Great Good Schools Produce Compliance
Great Schools Nurture Engagement

15. Engagement Requires
Commitment
Attention

16. The Need To Shift The Present Paradigm

17. From To
Attention
Commitment
Attendance
Compliance

18. Strategic compliance and ritual compliance may improve test performance, but profound learning only occurs when students are intellectually engaged.

19. Engagement definitions include:
To commit, partake in, pledge, promise, to share in, undertake to
A mutual promise to marry
Contact by fitting together eg engagement of the clutch
Employment
Battle, confrontation, clash, combat

20. Engagement
Is more than motivation…by focussing on the extent to which students demonstrate active interest, effort and concentration in specific work that teachers design – engagement calls special attention to the social contexts that help activate underlying motivation…
Cited in Smith, Donohue & Vibert, 1998

21. Motivation is about energy and direction – the reasons for behaviour.
Engagement describes energy in action – the connection between the person and the activity.
Three forms of engagement:
Behavioural
Emotional
Cognitive

22. Students can be motivated but disengaged.

23. Mapping student engagement in my classroom
Mapping Engagement
Why?
When?
How?
Mapping student engagement in my classroom
Who?
What?
Where?

24. The Task Matters Students will engage in tasks they find: Interesting
Challenging
Important

25. The Context Matters In the classroom the key factors are:
teacher – student relationships
pedagogy
classroom climate – norms of behaviour, peer group, decision making, achievement goals and expectations of success

26. The Context Matters In the school the key factors are:
school leadership
teacher learning
school culture
parent involvement
organising schools for learning

27. What is our core business?
Our core business in education is not learning – it is designing learning tasks, activities and experiences that encourage students to invest their most precious resources – time, energy and attention. Learning in schools happens when schools do their business.

28. Engaged Learners are driven by four essential goals
curiosity –
the need for understanding
success –
the need for mastery
originality –
the need for self-expression
relationships –
the need for involvement with others
Strong, Silver and Robinson, 1995

29. Definitions matter
Definitions of engagement are embedded in a social, cultural and political context
There are multiple ways of seeing
We bring our own values and perceptions
Some efforts to increase student engagement are actually designed to increase compliance.
Attempt to define in order to measure
Measure in order to improve

30. The Schlechty perspective on student engagement

31. Students are engaged when they are:
interested in the work,
challenged by the work,
satisfied with the work,
persistent in the work, and
committed to the work.
The critical result of student engagement is that students learn that which is important for them to learn

32. Profiles of Student Responses to Work
Students respond to the work we give them to do in five ways
1. They engage in the work- attend/commit/persist
2. They comply with doing the tasks assigned to achieve some extrinsic goal they have (strategic compliance)
3. They comply with doing the tasks assigned to avoid negative consequences (ritual compliance)
4. They disengage from the tasks or retreat but do not bother others
5. They disengage from the tasks or rebel and bother others

33. Engagement (High Attention and Commitment) Strategic Compliance
There are five ways that students respond or adapt to school-related tasks and activities:
Engagement (High Attention and Commitment)
Strategic Compliance
(High Attention and Low Commitment)
Ritual Compliance (Low Attention and Low Commitment)
Retreatism (No Attention and No Commitment)
Rebellion (Diverted Attention)
Reference: Shlechty, P (2005)

34. Profile Elements Authentic Engagement:
Strategic Compliance
Ritual Compliance
Retreatism
Rebellion
Authentic
Engagement
Authentic Engagement:
The task, activity, or work students are assigned or encouraged to undertake has inherent meaning or value to the student.

35. Profile Elements Strategic Compliance
Authentic
Engagement
Ritual Compliance
Retreatism
Rebellion
Strategic Compliance
The task, activity, or work has little or no inherent meaning or value to the student, but it is associated in the student’s mind with outcomes and results that are of value (e.g. results, pleasing parents etc.)
Strategic Compliance

36. Profile Elements Ritual Compliance:
Authentic
Engagement
Strategic Compliance
Retreatism
Rebellion
Ritual Compliance:
Students are willing to expend whatever effort is needed to avoid negative consequences, though they see little meaning in the tasks assigned or the consequences of doing those tasks.
Ritual Compliance

37. Profile Elements Retreatism:
The student is disengaged from the task, expends no energy in attempting to comply with the demands of the task, but does not act in a way that disrupts others and does not try to substitute other activities for the assigned task.
Authentic
Engagement
Strategic Compliance
Ritual Compliance
Rebellion
Retreatism

38. Profile Elements Rebellion:
The student summarily refuses to do the task assigned, acts in a way that disrupts others and/or attempts to substitute tasks and activities that he or she is committed to in lieu of those assigned by the school and the teacher.
Authentic
Engagement
Ritual Engagement
Passive Compliance
Retreatism
Rebellion

39. “Just try to make me do it”
Levels of engagement
Rebellion
Authentic
Engagement
Strategic Compliance
Ritual Compliance
Retreatism
“Just try to make me do it”
“I want to do it”
Rebellion
“I won’t do it”
“I should do it”
“I’ll do it if I have to”

40. Engagement
Any given student will be engaged in different ways in different tasks – at times, even with regard to the same task.

41. Highly Engaged Authentic Engagement Strategic Compliance Ritual
Retreatism
Rebellion

42. Well Managed Authentic Engagement Strategic Compliance Ritual
Retreatism
Rebellion

43. Pathological Authentic Engagement Strategic Compliance Ritual
Retreatism
Rebellion

44. Students are volunteers, and what they have to volunteer is their attention and commitment.

45. Measuring engagement is subjective but can be done
Only the student knows for sure
Engagement is a reflection of motivation
Engagement cannot be directly observed
Ask the student what about the work was-
Meaningful?
Interesting?
Challenging?
Caused persistence?
Satisfying?
Casual conversations
Interviews
Questionnaires

46. Which of the following best describes the way you have been working.
Tick ONE only.
Please do not write your name anywhere.
Year Level __________ Gender _________________ Date ____________
 I have really enjoyed the work in my class and I do what I am asked to do because I really enjoy the learning and like to do more. Sometimes I don’t want to stop the work because I am so “into it”. I can see how the work is relevant to my life.
 I always pay attention in class and do the work because I want to get a good report. I would rather be learning about other things most of the time but I will finish the work I have to do. I do not do any more than I have to unless the teacher asks me to.
 I do what I have to do to get by but I don’t put any more effort in than I have to. I try to stay out of trouble.
 I am bored and I have done little work in the lessons. I get on with it if the teacher is watching me. I have not caused any trouble for myself or my teachers.
 I have already been in some trouble because I have not done what the teachers tell me to do. That’s the way it goes.

47. What?
So what?
Now what?

48. If student performance is to be improved, says Phillip Schlechty, there are at least three ways to approach the problem:
work on the students,
work on the teachers, or
work on the work.
Unfortunately, the first two have thus far produced unimpressive results. The key to improving education, Schlechty believes, lies in the third alternative: to provide better quality work for students-work that is engaging and that enables students to learn what they need in order to succeed in the world

49. 10 Critical Qualities of Student Work
Content and Substance: Work should engage all students regardless of social or economic background and help them attain rich and profound knowledge.
Organisation and Knowledge Information and knowledge should be arranged in clear, accessible ways, and in ways that let students use the knowledge and information to address tasks that are important to them.
Product Focus Work that engages students almost always focuses on a product or performance of significance to them.

50. 10 Critical Qualities of Student Work
Clear and Compelling Standards Students prefer knowing exactly what is expected of them, and how those expectations relate to something they care about.
Protection from Adverse Consequences for Initial Failures Students should be able to try tasks without fear of embarrassment, punishment, or implications that they’re inadequate.
Affirmation of the Significance of Performance Students are more highly motivated when their parents, teachers, fellow classmates, and “significant others” make it known that the student’s work is important (ex.: portfolio assessment).

51. 10 Critical Qualities of Student Work
Affiliation Work should permit, encourage, and support opportunities for students to work interdependently with others.
Novelty and Variety Students should be continually exposed to new and different ways of doing things.
Choice When students have some degree of control over what they are doing, they are more likely to feel committed to doing it.
Authenticity When students are given tasks that are meaningless, contrived, and inconsequential, they are less likely to take them seriously and be engaged by them.If the task carries real consequences, it’s likely that engagement will increase.

52. One way of measuring engagement
What?
So what?
Now what?
One way of measuring engagement
May assist sites to gain data to analyse, interpret in order to change practice