The Challenges of Defining and Measuring Student Engagement in Science

TLDR

Engagement is a leading topic in educational psychology, linked to motivation and achievement, yet its definition and measurement remain poorly agreed upon. This special issue seeks to address conceptual and instrumentation challenges of engagement, focusing on science learning. The authors outline engagement’s behavioral, cognitive, emotional, and agentic dimensions and propose a grain‑size continuum from person‑ to context‑centered measurement to resolve instrumentation issues, summarizing included articles and suggesting future research.

Abstract

Engagement is one of the hottest research topics in the field of educational psychology. Research shows that multifarious benefits occur when students are engaged in their own learning, including increased motivation and achievement. However, there is little agreement on a concrete definition and effective measurement of engagement. This special issue serves to discuss and work toward addressing conceptual and instrumentation issues related to engagement, with particular interest in engagement in the domain of science learning. We start by describing the dimensional perspective of engagement (behavioral, cognitive, emotional, agentic) and suggest a complementary approach that places engagement instrumentation on a continuum. Specifically, we recommend that instrumentation be considered on a "grain-size" continuum that ranges from a person-centered to a context-centered orientation to clarify measurement issues. We then provide a synopsis of the articles included in this special issue and conclude with suggestions for future research.