Excerpted from “Reimagining Student Engagement: From Disrupting to Driving” by Amy Berry. Copyright © 2022 by Corwin Press, Inc. All rights reserved.
Students Engaged in Disrupting Driving
In 2016–2017, I decided to investigate the concept of student engagement from the perspective of the classroom teacher. I interviewed teachers in depth to understand their views on student engagement. I was particularly interested in the teachers’ descriptions of both everyday examples of students engaging, and also of powerful but less common examples of highly-engaged students. By doing so, I wanted to capture as many different kinds of engagements that teachers could encounter in the class. Since my research, I’ve had numerous opportunities to ask other teachers to describe their engagement or recount their experiences with student engagement. I’ve also received feedback from teachers, parents and others in the education community to suggest that the forms of engagement I described resonate with their own experiences and provide a useful reference point for their work with students. Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and John Hattie will be presenting a series of talks in 2020.
