Thursday, March 22, 2018

Where's my head at, what is engagement?

Lately I've been doing some thinking and questioning my own thinking.  I was asked how I will measure my learners engagement and I was stuck, I think I threw the word engagement around to easily. 

Are these kids engaged? 
How do I engage these kids?
Why is engagement so important?
How do I measure engagement?
What does engagement really mean?

I then did some research and have realised that there are many different types of engagement, two that I will be focusing on will be these two:
  • Behavioural Engagement
  • Cognitive Engagement

For my learners to be behaviourally engaged I have the understanding that they need to be focused and completing their work.  I am going to video my students and see if they are behaviourally engaged in their learning.  Cognitive engagement is a bit more tricky i've found.  I'm still researching and learning to understand what 'Cognitive Engagement' really is and how I will be able to measure this in my classroom.

I started my inquiry thinking that I was going to be making a whole lot of movies and have turned away from that idea since.  The reason I turned away was because I realised that my inquiry needed to based upon a problem that I have identified with my learners and that was engagement.  

I then have gone back and thought more critically about my inquiry and have come to think that making movies and looking at creating scripts could cognitively engage my learners.  I will still be looking at multiple ways of engaging my learners to write.  Any ideas please let me know!

No comments:

Post a Comment