Search

This commentary describes the contribution of each individual paper to our understanding of engagement, as well as evaluating whether together these papers achieve the editor's goal of developing an emerging consensus on the meaning and measurement of this construct. Individually these papers extend our understanding of specific aspects of engagement and contextual effects on engagement in important ways, but together have fallen short of the ambitious goal of bringing the different conceptualizations, measurements, and methods into closer alignment. The commentary concludes with a discussion of three issues that need to be addressed in future research on engagement including: 1) examining the degree of overlap between engagement and self-regulation, 2) more clearly articulating the role of affect in engagement, and 3) describing the crucial role of goals in engagement and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In my commentary, I discuss the historical origins of the Fredricks et al. 3 dimensions of engagement, provide some critical assessment of the individual papers in this special issue, and lay out the argument for renewed theoretical analysis of the concept of engagement. Specifically, the importance of theoretical work related to the definitions of engagement, dimensionality questions, and origins of, and influences, on engagement are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]