Connective teaching

Given the current crisis in engagement in US high schools, this work argues that educators must work systematically to increase classroom engagement. To facilitate this process, it introduces the Classroom Engagement Framework --which seeks to establish a clear definition of engagement, common language for discussing engagement, and collective understanding of engaging classroom practices. The Classroom Engagement Framework posits three conceptual points of entry for increasing global engagement through three types of classroom practices--lively instruction, academic rigor, and connective teaching--that target behavioral, cognitive, and emotional engagement, respectively.

Through surveys with 1,132 students at one high school, this research estimates that the relationship between connective teaching and engagement is almost half a standard deviation in size--more than two and a half times the effect sizes of lively instruction or academic rigor as predictors of engagement. Given this powerful relationship between connective teaching and engagement, the second phase of this study uses case studies of five classes and interviews with thirty-three students to examine how teachers most effectively implement the connective teaching practices of self-expression, relevance, care, understanding, and affirmation, and why students experience these practices as engaging. It finds that opportunities for self-expression are most engaging when they are varied, content-based, autonomous, and occur in psychologically safe learning environments. Students' experiences with curricular relevance appear to be most engaging when content offers present utility that relates directly to students' daily lives. Care and understanding are both found to be more engaging when they are personal and individual, yet students display high expectations of teacher care and only little expectation of teacher understanding. Finally, experiences with affirmation are most engaging when they occur through genuine experiences with academic success, rather than through teacher praise or grades. In examining why these practices engage students, this study finds that connective teaching practices support students' positive identity formation by promoting feelings of self-worth, positively influencing perceptions of intelligence, and facilitating self-definition. Across all of these findings, this research illustrates the complexity of teaching for engagement and seeks to help educators hone and refine classroom instruction to increase student engagement.