Student engagement: Current state of the construct, conceptual refinement, and future research directions

Abstract

Notwithstanding its crucial role in facilitating desired outcomes of schooling, educational psychology researchers have recognized the conceptual haziness of student engagement as a multidimensional construct. With the main purpose of refining its conceptual definition, this paper aims to attain the following four goals. First, we seek to highlight theoretical, conceptual, and operational concerns about the student engagement construct, and synthesize these concerns into four related areas: overgeneralization, jingle-jangle fallacies, object ambiguity, and under-theorization. Second, we conduct a comprehensive review of prevailing perspectives on student engagement and critically examine their strengths and limitations. Building upon such extant models, third, we offer the Dual Component Framework of Student Engagement, which differentiates learning engagement from school engagement, and articulates the conceptual definition and scope, as well as the objects and dimensions, of the two engagement constructs. Lastly, we underscore the theoretical, research, and applied implications of the proposed framework in advancing the field of student engagement.