Considerations Toward a Theory of Student Engagement

Abstract

Is a student’s being engaged a short-lived event (as the emotion of anger is) or a long-lived one (as the emotion of grief is)? Does being engaged involve a primitive cognitive process (e.g. fear of a snake in one’s path) or does it involve a sophisticated cognitive process (e.g. fear of looking unproductive in front of one’s superiors). Does being engaged involve strong motivations to act, and if so, to do what? Student engagement theories chart a messy terrain, which have resulted in higher education researchers sometimes talking at cross purposes. Part of this paper’s aim is to organise and offer a useful taxonomy of extant theories of student engagement. Three types of theories can be discerned from contemporary literature—what I call emotion theories, cognitive theories, and motivation theories. This paper argues for a functional student engagement theory that combines all three components. The implications of such a student engagement theory or framework are discussed in the paper’s penultimate section.