Student Engagement
I was riding home from the recent conference in Baltimore, I was reflecting
on some of the things that I heard. One thing that struck me during
this conference was Ruth McKinney’s reference to the ultimate happiness
website at UPenn. I began to think about other things that might
be slightly outside the mainstream of our normal reading that may carry
some good thoughts that inform what we do. Although there are
many resources within the legal education community that are indeed
helpful, it seems like some dynamite thoughts can come from many different
places if we are just looking. (I suppose just thinking this way
makes me one of those global learners)
thought that commanded my attention on the ride home was that of student
engagement. I recently read Shaking Up the Schoolhouse
by Phillip Schlechty (Josey-Bass Publishers, 2000) in which he examines
this topic in depth. Although his work is generally aimed at K-12
practitioners, it seems to me that many of his thoughts are just as
appropriate to legal education. (As a former high school teacher,
holder of a principal’s certificate and former school board member,
I tend to hang around in K-12 circles sometimes) Schlechty has
spent his career developing the concept of “working on the work”.
According to him, the business of schools and teachers is to develop
work and tasks that students will do and from which they will learn
what the teachers want them to learn. Central to his theme is
the notion is that teachers must develop engaging work. Without
a student’s engagement, the likelihood of actual learning taking place
is small.
Schlechty, engagement is not just being attentive or entertained.
He views engagement as attention plus commitment. Attention without
commitment is nothing more than compliance. Commitment without
attention is potential, but not much else. Therefore, we as teachers
must satisfy both in order to affect student learning. Students
are committed to a task when they find some inherent value in what it
is that we have asked them to do. (For a fuller development of
these thoughts, I suggest looking at www.schlechtycenter.org/pdfs/wow.pdf.)
does this mean for us in ASP? Even my grossly oversimplified explanation
of engagement raises a couple of questions that I believe I would do
well to consider frequently. First, are the students I work with
committed or only attentive? If they are only attentive or compliant,
I may not be making much of a difference. Second, is there some
inherent value to the student in what I have asked them to do?
Can they see it? Schlechty indicates when a student persists in
spite of complications, this is a sign that there is some inherent value
to the student. Am I looking for this or indeed structuring my
work to allow for this possibility? I need to develop work and
activities that will engage the student in order to bring about effective
change in their learning. In order to do this, I believe I need
to ask myself constantly if the students are engaged, i.e. committed
and not just attentive. If I am successful at this, I might actually
change the student. Otherwise I might just become one more person to
whom the student is required to pay attention.
return to the bigger point, there is much out there to inform what we
do. Primary and secondary education are good places to look, but
I would not stop there. Although I like the nuts and bolts stuff
and the method explanations, some of my favorite, and most informative,
presentations at recent workshops dealt with topics that come from other
fields, for example psychology and sociology. It’s amazing what
we can find to help us when we look around a little bit.
