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What the Research Actually Says

For many years educational psychology has described engagement as containing three dimensions (Fredricks Blumenfeld and Paris 2004).

Behavioral engagement which includes participation and compliance.
Emotional engagement which includes interest and positive feelings.
Cognitive engagement which includes mental effort and deep thinking.

Only cognitive engagement predicts long term learning and transfer (Chi 2009 and Sinatra Heddy and Lombardi 2015).

Schools have unintentionally become focused on the visible forms of engagement that can be observed from a doorway. Calm faces. Students following instructions. Hands raised. Active participation.

These cues are easy to see and therefore have gradually become the working definition of engagement. As a result entire collections of classroom strategies now exist to maintain those external behaviours. Attention getting techniques. Call and response routines. Mindfulness activities. Brain breaks. Movement breaks. Regulation tools.

These practices matter. They are rooted in care and a desire to help children feel safe and ready. Yet being ready to learn is not the same as learning. A regulated child is not learning unless the mind is actively thinking.

This leads to a truth that feels uncomfortable but is essential to say clearly.

A classroom can look calm cooperative and on task while learning very little. A calm classroom can still be cognitively silent.

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Why Many Off Task Behaviours Are Misunderstood

Research on mind wandering shows that behaviours often interpreted as distraction or dysregulation are frequently signs of low cognitive engagement instead of poor behaviour (Smallwood and Schooler 2006 and 2015).

When the mind does not engage it wanders. A wandering mind can produce a restless body.

A bored mind often creates a restless body.

The nervous system tends to disengage when curiosity is absent when meaning is unclear when the task has no purpose when ideas feel disconnected or when thinking is not required.

This is not a behaviour issue. It is cognitive science.

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A Simple Everyday Illustration

When I first learned this research it felt uncomfortable yet it made complete sense almost immediately.

Same topic. Same person. Completely different cognitive pull.

Curiosity acts like a switch. It turns attention into engagement. Attention follows thinking not the other way around.

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Cognitive Engagement Naturally Regulates the Body

Children demonstrate this beautifully.

A child building a Lego structure is not unfocused. They are intensely focused and intentional.
A child adding tiny details to a drawing is not off task. They are immersed and calm and experiencing cognitive flow.

Cognitive engagement naturally steadies the nervous system because the mind is absorbed in meaningful thinking (Reeve 2013).

Cognitive engagement also does not always look calm. When the brain is thinking deeply it can appear as movement, excitement animated discussion, ideas forming, questions flying, and thoughts colliding.

Because our working definition of engagement has become limited teachers often step in to regulate a child who is actually learning. The child is not dysregulated. Their behaviour simply does not match the outdated picture of engagement the system has taught us to look for.

A regulated state simply means the nervous system is settled enough for thinking. An engaged child can be animated, busy, enthusiastic or active while still being fully regulated.

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The Real Question We Must Ask

“What would happen if we stopped designing for calm and busy and instead began designing for thinking and meaning?”

Attention can reset behaviour. Regulation can steady the nervous system. Only cognitive engagement can sustain learning once the lesson begins.

There are no shortcuts for cognitive engagement. Research consistently points in the same direction. It is thoughtful lesson design that creates learning (Engle and Conant 2002 and Willingham 2009 and Hattie 2023).

The brain engages when curiosity is activated when thinking is required and when the meaning of the task is clear.

Without these elements children may look engaged while learning very little.

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The Missing Part of the Definition

Behavioral tools create calm.
Emotional tools create connection.
Cognitive tools create learning.

A child who is thinking is a child who is engaged.

When thinking disappears from our definition of engagement it disappears from our teaching as well.

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References

Chi M T H 2009. Active constructive and interactive learning. Topics in Cognitive Science 1 73 to 105.

Engle R A and Conant F R 2002. Guiding principles for productive disciplinary engagement. Cognition and Instruction 20 399 to 483.

Fredricks J A Blumenfeld P C and Paris A H 2004. School engagement potential of the concept state of the evidence. Review of Educational Research 74 59 to 109.

Hattie J 2023. Visible Learning The Sequel. Routledge.

Reeve J 2013. How students create motivationally supportive learning environments for themselves. Journal of Educational Psychology 105 579 to 595.

Sinatra G M Heddy B C and Lombardi D 2015. The challenges of defining and measuring student engagement in science. Educational Psychologist 50 1 to 13.

Smallwood J and Schooler J W 2006. The restless mind. Psychological Bulletin 132 946 to 958.

Smallwood J and Schooler J W 2015. The science of mind wandering empirically navigating the stream of consciousness. Annual Review of Psychology 66 487 to 518.

Willingham D T 2009. Why Don’t Students Like School Jossey Bass.