Authentic Engagement with Learning and Authentic Work
The following definitions are under construction at the authentic engagement wiki and will be regularly refined and updated thanks to your comments below and collaboration at the wiki.
Authentic engagment is a powerful means to the end of learning. Authentic engagement connects students to content through learning that allows for collaboration, inquiry, and leads to authentic work – work that extends beyond the classroom and contributes to students’ communities.
Characteristics of Authentic Engagement with Learning
- Students see their work as personally meaningful.
- Students’ feel challenged by the rigor of the work, persisting in difficult tasks because they consider the tasks worthwhile.
- Students master content through project-based, inquiry-driven learning with access to multiple types of media, including experts.
- Students work and learn collaboratively and socially, both online and off.
- Students evaluate for and select the best tools for their work.
- Students choose to revise work until it reflects their internal vision of what they learned and how they want to represent it.
Characteristics of Authentic Work
- Students’ work is published for an authentic audience.
- Students receive feedback on their work from experts before and after publication.
- Students revise work until it shows mastery of content and reflects the habits of mind of experts in its disicplines.
- Students’ work benefits their community.
Paula White (@paulawhite on Twitter, blogging at http://tzstchr.edublogs.org/) posts on engagement here, including John Antonetti’s engagement cube which highlights best practices in the design of learning for engagement. Another viewpoint on engagement comes from the Schlechty Center. Robert J. Marzano presents a meta-study take on engagement in chapter 5 of The Art and Science of Teaching. Bob Peterson writes about motivating students to do quality work here at Rethinking Schools Online. Quality work as defined by William Glasser, of Choice Theory fame, comes from students’ intrinsic engagement with learning in a joyful place, and thus also shares some characteristics with authentic engagement. Expeditionary Learning at schools like King Middle School, as well as authentic intellectual work and service-learning practices like those at Quest High School, also provide models for creating authentic engagement.
Please comment, tweet using the #AE hash-tag, send your thoughts to Chad, and join the authentic engagement wiki to help crosswalk these various definitions of engagement, as well as to refine, grow out, and scale up our understanding of authentic engagement and how to reform classroom practice with it.
Chad,
I appreciate the references above gathered in one place, especially because I am not familiar with the Bob Peterson one, so I now have something new to read.
The different terms, quality work, engagement, authentic engagement, etc. are all variations on a theme, but I don’t think are synonyms. The definitions of quality work have to do with the product. The definitions of engagement have to do with the student’s attitudes, habits of mind while involved and intensity/persistence/passion about the task.
So, for me, it’s not about engaging with experts inside or outside of my classroom for kids to be authentically engaged in learning. That’s about authentic WORK. It’s not about benefiting the community–that, too is about the work. So, I wouldn’t agree that your 4, 5, 6, and 7 describe authentic engagement so much as they do authentic work/products.
For me, engagement is all tied up in the level of effort the student is willing to invest in the task. So I agree with Schlechty’s statements:
• The student sees the activity as personally meaningful.
• The student’s level of interest is sufficiently high that he persists in the face of difficulty.
• The student finds the task sufficiently challenging that she believes she will accomplish something of worth by doing it.
• The student’s emphasis is on optimum performance and on “getting it right.” (MY addition–this does not mean getting it right on the test, but getting it right for oneself–truly understanding the content, the material, the process, the work so that it becomes a part of your skill and knowledge repertoire.)
It’s not about compliance, as Marzano seems to say when he says engagement is the kid doing what the teacher asks. It’s not about doing work for outside experts or even the teacher. That stuff is about worthwhile work, quality work, important tasks or whatever you want to call them, but those are all about the product, not the student’s engagement. (Now does worthwhile work (such as that described in 4, 5, 6, 7 above) engage the student? Absolutely.. .but it’s not necessary in the definition of engagement.)
For me, engagement is about personalized, meaningful learning for (mostly) intrinsic reasons–persisting and persevering through challenge and difficulty to develop deep understanding and increased process skills.
Paula White
25 Jul 09 at 6:37 pm
BTW–The term classroots is BRILLIANT!!
I am so glad you became part of my online PLN. Thanks for starting this conversation and jumping into Twitter at Edustat so I found you.
Paula White
25 Jul 09 at 6:41 pm
[...] Chad Sansing, (@classroots on Twitter) is a brilliant educator in my school division. I have known of Chad for many years (he’s been middle school, I am elementary, so we’ve had little opportunity to interact personally, but we’ve met.) During the recent PD opportunity, Edustat, we joined each other’s online PLN and I am thrilled to have him as part of mine. I highly recommend him to others–he’s an educator who interacts and is a great thinker! Recently, he posted a definition of authentic engagement on his website, Classroots.org [...]
Engagement and Quality Work | Reflections of the TZSTeacher
25 Jul 09 at 7:15 pm
Paula, maybe it would be better to provide definitions of authentic engagement and authentic work. Would 4-7 fit an “authentic work” definition? Your bullets do a great job pulling the “why” out of my mostly “what” defintion.
Chad
25 Jul 09 at 8:07 pm
I have updated our definition of authentic engagement and added a definition of authentic work for consideration and further collaboration. Thank you Paula! I’m hoping that @tborash will soon share some of his cross-walking between our definition and Schlechty’s work.
Chad
25 Jul 09 at 9:24 pm
Chad, after reading and thinking about your post and Paula’s comments, I have become a believer in the goal of AE, Authentic Engagement.
What I have realized in thinking about your post and our previous conversation, is that what most educators call engagement is does not match the definition of Authentic Engagement.
I have participated in countless classroom visits or walkthroughs and have heard many a teacher or administrator say, “The students were so engaged.” But the only part of your definition that would apply is #4 Students work and learn from one another collaboratively and socially.
Most of the time, what they mean when they say the students were engaged, is that the students were paying attention, on task, talking about the subject, or helping each other.
While this is not a bad thing, it does not reach the depth of authentic engagement and does not mean there is understanding in the learning.
When I taught students in a 1:1 laptop situation, students were often very “engaged” in working on their laptop using software of a website. But, when I truly monitored their conversation or work, they were more interested in the “playing” part than the “learning” part. Someone walking into the room would say they were engaged (paying attention, on task, talking to each other) but there was little understanding about the learning goal. I had to readjust my teaching strategies to reach what I thought was true engagement.
Reading your ideas on Authentic Engagement, I realize this is where I was heading. But, I think many still believe that engagement means eyes on the teacher, on the work, or on each other. But that is not does bring understanding in the learning or authenticity in the engagement.
Rob Jacobs
25 Jul 09 at 10:02 pm
This whole conversation on authentic engagement has truly engaged me as a teacher. I’m reading the posts and discussions with interest. I am thinking about how this can impact me and my work. I am thinking about people who engage in this practice on a regular basis. And I am thinking that my comments, collaboration if you will, in this discussion help all of us to visualize what AE really means. Kevin Hodgson is a great example of a teacher who is implementing AE in his grade 6 classroom. I offer his site as one worth viewing for good examples of teaching.
“1. Students’ work is published for an authentic audience outside the classroom.
2. Students receive feedback on their work from experts before and after publication.
3. Students revise work until it shows mastery of content and follows experts’ guidelines.
4. Students’ work benefits their community.”
Rob, I understand what you mean about the appearance of engagement as evidenced in many walkthroughs. Sometimes that playfulness is just evidence of a student learning to work with the new procedure or tool. When my kindergarten class gets a hold of the laptops, they want to play with the program. They are less concerned about learning (at least not consciously) as they are about playing. The engagement kicks in when they discover something about the program that is cool. Then they want to share, and show, and explain to everyone who will listen just what they have discovered. A change takes place in the room. Now the students are talking with each other (collaborating,) moving around the room to show and share their new knowledge, and asking to have their work saved. When my class discovered thisissand.com they were thrilled to have a product that could be saved on the website. Many children asked that their parents learn about the site so they could continue exploring at home.
I will continue to follow the conversations here through my reader. Thanks for sharing.
Gail P
25 Jul 09 at 10:41 pm
Gail, maybe I should have used a different example. I do understand that there is a level of playfulness needed when using new technologies or any other new tool. I guess what I am referring to is when students appear to be engaged, but they don’t understand what or why they are learning, but they still are on task, or paying attention. When you ask them, “Why are you learning this?” or “What is this all about?” and they don’t know, but they are certainly engaged in the activity. So often, that is what we accept as engagement.
Rob Jacobs
25 Jul 09 at 11:28 pm
Rob, I, too, get it. I don’t want to get too wordy, but maybe something like “authentic engagement with learning” would better convey the term’s meaning so it’s not confused with the engagement that comes from kids’ natural socialization with one another and the novelty and variety offered by technology. Thank you so much for commenting. I fully empathize with you on the 1:1 computing and am working hard to better structure that use in my classroom this year, too.
Chad
26 Jul 09 at 4:33 am
Chad,
This looks to me like the start of a Charter School mission! Or, as your post on The Edurati Review conveyed, should this be the mission of all schools?
While, as you mentioned, many ‘rock star’ teachers already do this in their classrooms, it seems to me like AE should be the norm. I agree with Rob (whose blog I love, by the way) that we often use the word ‘engagement’ when we see students working or ‘looking busy’ in a classroom. The real way to find out the level of engagement, as people have been discussing, is to ask the children about what they are doing.
When trying to make a project or learning experience authentic, I think your point about sharing it outside of the classroom is an important one. If you use the definition of ‘authentic’ as meaning ‘real,’ then how better to make a child’s learning apply to the real world than to put it out there? With the Internet, this is as simple as publishing a piece of work online. This can also be achieved through a student show after school or hosted at a local business or community center.
I agree with Paula that a student’s work must be personally meaningful. After all, authentic can also mean ‘true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character.’
I wonder what people’s thoughts are on making EVERYTHING a student does in the classroom authentic engagement with learning (including memorizing times tables and learning letter sounds)?
Thanks for starting this conversation, and I’ll be looking for the #AE hashtag!
Mary Beth Hertz
26 Jul 09 at 7:09 pm
Mary Beth, join us on the wiki as well. . . http://authenicengagement.wikispaces.com
Paula White
26 Jul 09 at 7:26 pm
I’ve pasted the new checklist above and word-smithed it some on the wiki. . that’s an easier place than here to do something like that.
http://authenicengagement.wikispaces.com
Paula White
26 Jul 09 at 7:40 pm
Interesting conversation. I see the same thing as Paula, that there is a difference between the product and the engagement. I would add that the discussion that Chad and Rob are having is a valuable one that should happen at all schools.
I am thinking aloud here that engagement with process is a bit different than engagement with product, and that both are valuable types of engagement for producing learning. I am thinking that engagement can happen when it is self directed/chosen, but can also happen when it is not. I am also a believer that if we describe engagement as “authentic” then we are talking about the truths of what it feels like, looks like, and sounds like to be engaged-interested-driven-curious and not about the authenticity of the task, which is a different thing, no?
Bonita DeAmicis
26 Jul 09 at 11:44 pm
Bonita, Paula’s thinking, like yours, about product/process has helped us better understand how to be more authentic in designing both. Thank you!
I think designing authentic work helps drive teachers’ planning for learning with the qualities of authentic engagement. However, students can definitely be authentically engaged with learning that’s personally meaningful to them even when its not published outside the classroom.
Again, thanks for your comment and for joing the conversation!
Chad
27 Jul 09 at 6:30 am
[...] @classroots blog and the accompanying wiki he and I began to join a conversation about authentic [...]
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