ZYN04008 AARE 2004
    International Education Research Conference Melbourne Doing the Public Good: Positioning Education Research
    
    Doing education not doing time. Engaging Pedagogies and Pedagogues - what does student engagement look like in action?
    
    David Zyngier Faculty of Education, Monash University
    
    Correspondence: David Zyngier Faculty of Education, Monash University, P.O. Box 527, Frankston, Victoria, 3199 AUSTRALIA. Phone: (03) 9904 4230 Fax: (03) 9904 4027 Email: David.Zyngier@Education.Monash.edu.au
    
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    Doing education not doing time. Engaging Pedagogies and Pedagogues - what does student engagement look like in action?
    David Zyngier Faculty of Education, Monash University
    Student engagement has been identified as an important precursor to student learning. Engagement of students in the life of the school and in their own learning is important in creating the possibility for continued learning and retention (Newmann). 'Engagement is the student's psychological investment in learning, comprehending and mastering knowledge or skills' (Newmann, 1989, 34) Since the English study of Willis (1977) it is almost generally accepted that school students today are more alienated, resistant and disengaged than ever before. In the 21st century, student engagement has become the "flavour of the month" for educrats, the international educational academy, schools and even the public media. Engagement, especially in the so-called problematic middle years is now at the centre of mainstream education discussion and debate. Although specific reference in Australia to student engagement as a prerequisite for productive learning can be located in the mid 1990's (Cumming, 1996), Newmann (1981) in the USA was already considering the connection between student engagement and effective learning, particular for students recognized as at-risk. Contemporaneously, critical pedagogy was discussing resistance as the antithesis of engagement and the contradictory act of resistance and accommodation as a self protective negative agency in response to unequal power relations (Shor, 1980, 13). Report after report (both national and international) seem to verify the lack of engagement and connection that young people exhibit to both their schooling and their community. For three decades or more, educational sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, have theorized how and why schools produce and reproduce unequal educational outcomes and benefits and thus contribute to ongoing social inequality (Thomson, 2002, 10). Each discourse produces its own distinct understanding of what really defines student engagement. Important work is currently being undertaken in Australia (and elsewhere) on the kinds of classroom pedagogies that improve engagement for all students, (Lingard et al., 2001a, Lingard et al., 2001b) but in particular those variously labeled as at-risk (of non-completion of 12 years of schooling or early leaving), disadvantaged or from low socio-economic backgrounds. This paper seeks to answer three linked questions; whose conception of engagement is most worthwhile; what actually are the purposes of engagement and who benefits (and gets excluded) from these purposes and finally how might we conceive of student engagement in order to achieve the twin goals of social justice and academic achievement? (Butler-Kisber and Portelli, 2003)
    
    Introduction
    School teaching is full of spurious emotions. Schools are places where boredom is often misinterpreted as studious commitment and frustration or enthusiasm are viewed as hyperactivity. (Hargraves, 2001) Can you imagine studying something for twelve years and at the end you still haven't mastered it? Imagine … students sitting through long school years, through thousands of hours [it is estimated that students spend some 16000 hours in school] of instruction in reading and writing, math and history. All the autumns, winters and springs of their youth are dominated by a schooling that refuses to sink in. At the end, they are on their way to college still needing more work in language, math and social studies; or else they are flung unceremoniously into the job-world that has little room for them. Whichever direction they go, their education has not permitted them to find out who they are and
    
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    what's happening to them, and what they need to be free and whole. A disorientation towards reality accompanies the student's weak possession of literacy and conceptual skills. (Shor, 1980: 195) Engagement is difficult to define operationally, but we know it when we see it, and we know it when it is missing. (Newmann, 1986)
    
    At the beginning of the 21st Century, there is significant interest and concern within Victoria as well as in other Australian states, with student retention, participation and achievement rates in post compulsory schooling. By way of response, governments and schools have developed many programs which aim to improve students’ engagement with learning and improve educational outcomes for all students but in particular those identified as ‘at-risk of disengagement’ from schooling, and education and training more broadly. These aims reflect the current Victorian Minister of Education’s commitment to:
    … develop[ing] innovative programs … [that] will drive the required systemic changes that will allow schools to improve retention rates, lift achievement levels, and actively engage all students in education. … [T]his new program for students in Years 7 to 10 … is aimed at … keeping all Victorian students engaged and stimulated at school. (Access,
    Innovation and Excellence: State Budget 2002)
    
    Since Willis’ (1977) research, it is assumed that school students today are more alienated, resistant and disengaged than ever before. Finn (1989, 117) identified that ‘the problem of school dropouts has become something of a national obsession.’ Report after report seem to verify the lack of engagement and connection that young people exhibit to both their schooling and their community. Various state education departments have prepared documents that focus on the need for schools to re-engage with the disengaged. Engagement, especially in the so-called problematic middle years is now at the centre of mainstream education discussion and debate. While specific reference in Australia to student engagement as a prerequisite for productive learning can be located in the mid 1990's (Cumming, 1996), student engagement has become a popular by-word in education, in schools, in the academy, in the departments of education, in the media and on the street. Many references to student engagement in scholarly educational journals, use the term in title or abstract without ever defining what (in their view) it means (Emmer and Gerwels, 2002, Leithwood and Jantzi, 2000, Quinn, 2002, are recent examples of this phenomenon). Although explicit references to student engagement can be seen as a relatively recent development since the mid 1990’s, there is a long tradition from Dewey to Freire that connects engagement with student learning; this connection between engagement and learning, democratic practice and social justice has more recently been taken up by critical and feminist pedagogies. Since the mid 1990’s there has been considerable research focussed on student engagement. The current research into teaching and learning in Australia (and elsewhere) has important implications for pedagogies that make engagement central for all students, but in particular for those traditionally viewed as “at-risk”. Framing the Problem For more than one-quarter of the students in school today, and for a greater proportion of some groups, the educational issue is not even tertiary entrance rank; these students will leave school before such issues become a reality. Of these young people, a disproportionate number are “low achievers”, boys, indigenous or from low socioeconomic status families. Many young people leave school early for reasons other than to find work; a significant minority leave because they fail to see the 3
    
    relevance of school to them. Many have, over a period of time, it is claimed become alienated from education and from their schools. While this disengagement or alienation might be seen in terms of dropping out or individualistic problematic behaviour at school, it can also be seen in terms of the school failing to enable the student to achieve their potential. ‘Some students simply endure thirteen years of schooling at minimum participation levels. If we are to encourage lifelong learning skills in students then we need to address low engagement with school’ (Fullarton, 2002, 31). This paper seeks to examine the current research and debates about pedagogies of engagement in the context of current education policy by putting at the very centre the question; engagement for whom, engagement in what, engagement for what purpose and to what end? The answers to these questions not only reveal much about the epistemological purposes of education of researchers, but challenge the traditional assumptions and understandings of education, that all that is needed is some tweaking as the system is generally performing the designed functions for society. A key consideration of this paper is ‘whether engagement is a key centralising factor in the successful implementation of empowering classroom pedagogies’ (McFadden and Munns, 2002, 359). The paper then proceeds to critically examine the hegemonic discourse that suggests student engagement is closely linked to academic achievement. Three contesting epistemological constructions of student engagement are identified and examined together with acknowledgement of a “student view” in order to answer the three linked questions; (i) whose conception of engagement is most worthwhile; (ii) what actually are the purposes of engagement and (iii) who benefits (and gets excluded) from these purposes. In conclusion, we ask how might we conceive of student engagement in order to achieve the twin goals of social justice and academic achievement? (Butler-Kisber and Portelli, 2003) If ‘all intellectual scholarship, research and writing are inevitably politically motivated’ (Sefa Dei, 2003, 249), then this research seeks to contribute to professional understandings about the kind of reforms to classroom practice that produce more socially just outcomes for all our students (Thomson and Comber, 2003). Beliefs and Assumptions … For three decades or more, those concerned with education have theorised how and why schools produce and reproduce unequal educational outcomes and benefits and thus contribute to ongoing social inequality (Thomson, 2002, 10). In education many have grown accustomed to using a discourse that constitutes youth as a problem to be solved (for example the problem of the middle years, the problem of early school leaving, the problem of alienation and disengagement). Such negative constructions of young people - as at-risk/deviant/victims/offenders/aliens/dolebludgers and so on, not surprisingly can produce negative results in the young people themselves. This deficit discourse is evident in our staff-rooms, classrooms, parentteacher meetings and report cards reappearing in disadvantaged settings as common sense. “That's the way these kids are …” - “Their parents just wouldn't be interested in …” - “What else would you expect from ….” - “You couldn't do that in this school with these kids … .” We should not be surprised to learn that young people from the most disadvantaged groups, from cultural and ethnic minorities, are the most stigmatized in this deficit discourse (Thomson and Comber, 2003) leading to
    
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    pathologizing of students and their local families and their communities when accounting for youth failure at school. As early as 1984 significant USA research acknowledged that
    [w]e cannot afford to ignore the hypothesis that the institution of schooling is not capable of providing large numbers of our young people with the education they and democracy requires. … Increasingly the issue will be whether students as a consequence of the school they happen to attend and the classes to which they are assigned, have equality of access to knowledge. (Goodlad, 1984, 90 and 131)
    
    Goodlad acknowledged also that
    [t]here is in the gap between our highly idealistic goals for schooling in our society and the differentiated opportunities condoned and supported in schools a monstrous hypocrisy. …. Schools mirror inequities in the surrounding society and many people want to be sure that they continue to do so. The ultimate definition of equal educational opportunity is not just equal access but equal outcomes. (Goodlad, 1984, 161)
    
    Ascribing a lack of ability, motivation, performance on the basis of a post-code (Vinson, 2004) can lead directly to destructive deficit assumptions about the possibilities of/for student engagement so that teachers’ ways of thinking translates directly into their actions. Children living in poverty or on the margins are then offered an education based on a pedagogy of poverty (Haberman, 1991). Haberman stressed the insidious yet powerful hold that the pedagogy of poverty has in disadvantaged schools, warning that it can
    undermine the implementation of any reform effort because it determines the way pupils spend their time, the nature of the behaviours they practice, and the bases of their selfconcepts as learners. Essentially, it is a pedagogy in which learners can "succeed" without becoming either involved or thoughtful. (Haberman 1991, 292)
    
    Schools claim democratic virtues, yet in everyday life, often embrace a perplexing and contradictory logic based on the capitalist market (Shapiro, 1990) the result of which is for marginalized youth an education based on social injustice, racism, class and gender inequality (Apple, 1996). The question is how does one escape the seemingly inevitability of cultural reproduction against a background of the culturally productive prospects of counter-hegemonic resistance (Kanpol, 1997b, 7). Haberman’s Poverty of Pedagogy (1991) challenged the notion that classroom practice is necessarily determined and imposed by the teacher. He raises the problematic issue that disadvantaged students are the most likely to reject out of hand (at least initially) new approaches that include intellectually challenging work in favour of repetitive, non challenging and for the student, educationally debilitating work. If it is correct that teachers often operate in a classroom with an unwritten contract of “don’t stress me and we won’t disrupt your class” (Haberman, 1991) then change cannot be found solely in modifying what teachers do. Marginalized students may resist such efforts even when the intent is to offer improved educational outcomes (McFadden and Munns, 2002, 361). Research into “cynical eighth graders” describes the coping strategies of students as a counter-hegemonic agenda, as forms of institutional political resistance (Kanpol, 1997a). This resistance is mainly concerned with breaking rules, use of oppositional language and developing survival mechanisms that would challenge authority. Kanpol views this resistance as of little substance and distinguishes this from a more substantive counter-hegemony of cultural political resistance (Kanpol, 1997b, 5 emphasis in original).
    
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    Defining the issue Discussion of student engagement must be grounded in the reality of schools and their philosophies of education. Goodlad (1984) recognised that there was a disjuncture between the ‘pedagogical needs for variability and creativity required to engage young people in challenging encounters with knowledge’ and that this tended to decline in upward progression through schools into senior classes. Moreover he found inequities between access to knowledge for certain students of colour, ethnicity and economic status. Simultaneously peer group interests and values of academic learning created a picture of an “upside down quality” in schooling with those procedures most likely to engage students in learning decreasing at the very age when it was most needed (Goodlad, 1984, 358-9). Contesting definitions of engagement … The phrase “engagement in school” is often cited as an essential component of programmatic interventions for students “at risk”. However, there have been very few attempts to define engagement other than behaviorally or to study it as part of the learning process. Researchers acknowledge that definitions of engagement encompass a wide variety of constructs that ‘can help explain how children behave, feel and think in school’ (Fredericks et al., 2003). These definitions are commonly a mix of (i) behavioural aspects of the student as doing the work, following the rules, persisting and participating, while (ii) emotional aspects centres interest, value and feelings (negative and positive) towards school, the class and teacher and (iii) cognitive engagement (psychological investment) includes motivation, effort and strategy use of students. These views see student engagement as something students do and that teachers can organise for them (Luse, 2002, my emphasis). Finn (1989) presented a model of student engagement with two central components, participation and identification which has subsequently dominated the research agenda. Participation, the behavioral component, includes basic behaviors such as the student's acquiescence to school and class rules, arriving at school and class on time, attending to the teacher, and responding to teacher-initiated directions and questions. Noncompliant behavior, for example, inattentiveness, disruptive behavior, or refusing to complete assigned work, represents a student's failure to meet these basic requisites. Other levels of participation include initiative-taking on the part of the student (initiating questions or dialogue with the teacher, engaging in help-seeking behavior), and participation in the social, extracurricular, athletic and governance aspects of school life. Identification, the affective component, refers to the student's feelings of belonging in the school setting and valuing the outcomes that school will provide, for example, access to post-school opportunities. Finn’s (1989) participation/identification model has been readily adopted here in Australia (see for example Fullarton, 2002) and is characterised by associating lack of engagement with poor academic performance. This has led to an essentialising of engagement, portraying engagement and its concurrent academic success as a function of the individual, ignoring the contribution of gender, socio-cultural, ethnic and economic status (class) factors. This typology does not account for the distinctions in engagement recently made by Schlechty (2002); that students may be no more than passively compliant or even ritualistically engaged - that is they are playing the rules of the game as described by Haberman (1991). Marks (2000) after Finn (1989), states that ‘[engagement is central] to achievement and to optimal human development’ and
    
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    that its lack of presence ‘initiates a downward spiral that may lead to dysfunctional school behaviour’ (Marks, 2000, 155). According to this view, as schools become more effective students are more engaged and academic performance is hence improved. Greater student engagement is a sign therefore of school improvement. Such studies seek to demonstrate a strong relationship between engagement and performance, such that student participation leads to academic success ‘across diverse populations’ and that engagement has a ‘consistent, strong correlation with academic performance’ and also race/ethnicity and socio-economic status (Finn, 1989, 118Finn et al., 2003, 323-324). Marks (2000, 171) concludes that socio-economic status consistently predicts engagement for middle school students reinforcing the conclusion of the QSRLS (Lingard 2001) and Schlechty (2002) that while middle class students and middle class schools have a higher overall engagement, the longer a student stays at school the lower is their engagement. What do students say … Young people report strong dissatisfaction with what they see as a narrow range of teaching methods and classroom practices. While there has been much recent acknowledgment of the need for teaching to cater for diversity (of learning styles and cultural difference), these students do not appear to see much application of these approaches in practice; however these are seen by young people as resulting in the adoption of practices of individualised responsibility (‘I teach, you learn’), of teachers teaching to the middle ground of the classroom, or of a concentration on teaching to the ‘smart’ or tertiary-bound students (Brown and Holdsworth, 2001, 105). Many students do not believe their school experience has much bearing on their future and don’t feel that they are accepted by their classmates and teachers. Gradually these students feel disaffected and withdraw from school life. Some become disruptive and exert a negative influence on other students (Willms, 2003). As one ex-student noted, ‘“when you are standing outside the classroom all day, it is very difficult to learn”’ (Brown and Holdsworth, 2001, 105). Engagement is not a predictor of academic success - academic achievement does not necessarily equal engagement … Contrary to the view of many researchers into student engagement that ‘there is considerable evidence in the research literature of the association between engagement and positive academic outcomes’ (Fredericks et al., 2003), the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2000 study Student Engagement at School (Willms, 2003) concludes that engagement is not a predictor of academic success and that while the prevalence of disengaged students varies between countries and among schools within countries this is not attributable solely to family background, or to academic achievement. On the contrary the study concludes that ‘there is a significant number of students with a strong [academic] performance who are nevertheless disaffected from school’ (Willms, 2003, 3) and that while previous literature suggests that ‘risk factors’ for disengagement and low achievement come to school with the student, this report does not infer that low student engagement is the consequence of family related risk factors like poverty, low parental education or even low cognitive ability (Willms, 2003, 10). Willms found that while the ‘contextual affects’ of school are important, a high percentage of minority or low socio-economic
    
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    status students in a school led to higher dropout, but not necessarily disengagement (Willms, 2003, 11). The report revealed that in Australia more than 20% of middle years students have a low sense of belonging, while almost 20% also have low student participation. Contradicting Finn and others, it concludes that student sense of belonging to a school is a weak measure of academic performance and is not strongly related to either participation or ability. Students with a low sense of belonging fit into a wide range of SES groups. Students therefore who reject (for any reason) the school’s values are labeled alienated or disengaged. Schlechty (2001; 2002) however recognises that even such students who withdraw or retreat (according to Schlechty) are making conscious decisions (therefore are perhaps engaged) about their schooling. Like Schlechty, Bangert-Drowns et al. (Bangert-Drowns and Pyke, 2001, BangertDrowns and Pyke, 2002) in attempting a taxonomy of engagement view student engagement as a multifaceted and complex concept, acknowledging that engagement can also be problematic, unsystematic or even frustrated as well as structured, selfregulated, literate and finally critical. The research of Willms, Schlechty and Bangert-Drowns et al. rejects the notion that engagement is an unalterable characteristic, either inherited or experienced from home but ‘entails attitudes and behaviours that can be affected by teachers and parents and shaped by school policy and practice (Willms, 2003, 9). Even though students have the necessary academic abilities and skills they still may become disaffected from school as the recent On Track data from Victorian schools (Department of Education & Training, 2004) demonstrates that educators cannot presume that students with a satisfactory or high level of academic achievement are also engaged - many indeed withdraw from school, or do not continue with further studies after completing their requisite of 12 years (Shor, 1980, 195). Newmann (1981, 1986, 1989, 1992) developed increasingly complex understanding of engagement. His 1992 study identifies the factors that affect engagement in academic work as (i) school membership (clarity of purpose, fairness, personal support, success and caring) and (ii) authentic work (extrinsic rewards, intrinsic interests, sense of ownership, connection to real world and fun (Newmann, 1992, 18). Recent research suggests that in order to address this problem requires a whole system restructure that emphasises challenging academic work in a mainstream (non tracked) environment that includes greater real parental involvement where students are empowered to control their own learning through an authentic, (Schlechty, 2001) productive, (Lingard, 2001) or generative pedagogy (Zyngier, 2003). The swings and roundabouts … that bring it all together Where engagement is defined (narrowly) as willingness to become involved in teacher initiated tasks and at the same time is separated from the students’ socio-political and cultural contexts we find that if a student is engaged then the teacher is responsible, but if the student is disengaged then the problem is with the student. This correlation between participation and achievement is interpreted as causality (Fullarton, 2002). The reification of student engagement sanctions the identification and measurement of those conditions that seem to encourage or impede engagement. So we return to the questions; engagement for whom - in what - for what purpose - to what end? Engagement is more than doing well on academic exercises or participation in sport and other extra-curricula activities. It forms the basis for social, cultural political and intellectual participation in life within and beyond school.
    
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    Perspectives of social justice and engagement - three contesting perspectives … Reflecting on engagement, Newmann (1996) includes three necessary components; (i) the construction of knowledge, (ii) disciplined inquiry, and the (iii) production of discourse, products or performances that have value beyond school success. As early as 1981 Newmann warned against programs designed to make students just feel good. Eliminating alienation is not the same as eliminating stress or effort. On the contrary it is ‘arranging conditions so that [students] expend energy (Newmann, 1981, 548). Even with exciting material students may remain apathetic (Haberman,1991). Schoolwork that is incongruent with a student’s cultural commitments can ‘assault self esteem’ (Newmann, 1986, 555). Dodd (1995, 65) suggests that what is needed to engage students is not necessarily learning that is fun, but learning over which they have ownership; that empowers them to make a difference to their lives. If engagement is to be socially just then all students should not only have equality and equity of access to activities, learning at similar levels but also have similar opportunities beyond school related to these activities. Students from home backgrounds more closely resembling the dominant school culture are most likely to develop the engaging positive school relationships noted by Finn and Fullerton. Newmann identified three dominant perspectives to account for engagement. He referred to these as the (i) conventional or professional technological (ii) the developmental and (iii)the cultural emancipatory perspective (Newmann, 1986, 559560). All may appear in some form in various schools, in various classes at different times (and even perhaps within individual teacher’s pedagogies). Each school has however a dominant culture and perspective, which based on Newmann’s original typology and informed by Vibert et al. (2003), I now describe as (i) Instrumentalist or rational technical (ii) Social constructivist or individualist and (iii) Critical transformative engagement. Instrumentalist or rational technical Fullarton’s review of the studies examining the relationship of participation in extracurricular activities with academic achievement in school, concluded that participation is correlated with a number of desirable outcomes, including higher levels of self-esteem and feelings of control over one’s life, higher educational aspirations and higher grades, especially among males, in school (Fullarton, 2002, 2). Grounded in an objectivist understanding this involved counting the numbers of students on task or completing assigned work, involved in particular activities and other extra curricula activities. This view is manifested through surveys, observations, and test data analysis. There appears little or no attempt to “go beneath the surface” to understand the meaning that students make of the activity or their motivation to participate. Built on teacher initiation or “doing for, rather than doing with”
    these activities are common to most [primary] schools and are illustrative of teachers trying, in various ways to develop both pedagogical and social activities in which students may be both involved and interested. (Vibert A. B and Shields, 2003, 227)
    
    Teachers are well intentioned, exhibiting initiative and effort to involve students in numerous activities. Often reflected in this deficit view, is the attitude that students and parents were not competent nor capable of taking on responsibilities and planning because of their “background”. Engagement becomes equated with compliance with adult determined rules and participation in adult determined and led activities. Where the (attributed) deficit is located in the background of the student, then parents too are 9
    
    reduced to being recipients of school-based programs rather than being empowered to be active partners in their children’s educational development (Smith et al., 2001, 132). Fullarton (2002) finds however that it does matter which school a student attends; socioeconomic status is a persistent influence on participation, both at the individual level and at the school level. She concludes that students with parents who have the financial resources to allow a wide participation in extracurricular activities obtain a benefit from schooling that those students with less access to financial resources do not. Social constructivist or individualist engagement Student centred pedagogy envisages engagement as implicit in active learning where self-motivation, reflective shared goal setting and student choice is located in the lived experiences of the students. This certainly produces more dignified and interesting classrooms, but does it necessarily raise substantive (and critical) student inquiry that questions the acceptance of official knowledge (Apple, 1996) for all students not just the middle class. Thus the schools making the strongest claims for engagement (Fullarton, 2002) are located in middle class professional schools (Willms, 2003) where students learn the efficacy of their own values and manners in a system that neatly matches their own cultural background thereby reinforcing the cultural capital of the dominant hegemonic group. If the student is left alone to choose can they alone interrupt officially sanctioned discourses ‘where the right choices are powerfully inculcated in institutional habits, routines [and] what in this context might student choice mean’ (Vibert A. B and Shields, 2003, 7) in a system of schooling where domination is perpetuated? (Sefa Dei, 2003). Shared decision making is an illusion for students if they are not able to question and interrupt their own marginalisation. A student centered or social constructivist engagement defaults to a conservative position and ‘may become simply a more friendly method of encouraging on task [passive-compliant] behaviour’ (Vibert and Shields, 2003, 8). Too often student centred teaching makes connections between classroom learning and the world outside the school that remains uncritical and in the realm of make believe where teachers design activities that ‘simulate real-world environments … so that students can carry out authentic tasks as real workers would …’ (Day, 2002, 23). Sing and Luke caution that a pedagogy based on ‘unproblematic notions of individualism and liberalism which attempt to recognise and celebrate difference per se’ (Bernstein, 1996, xiii) can actually conceal the pedagogical practices that are the cause of inequality of opportunity and outcomes for the disadvantaged in schools. Just saying that teachers need to be sensitive to student culture, background and experience (Lingard et al., 2001) does not necessarily mean that the curriculum and pedagogy is inclusive and culturally sensitive (McFadden and Munns, 2002). The “romp, stomp and chomp” or festivals, folklore and food supplemental celebrations of difference still serves to subsume the other in the dominant culture (McMahon, 2003). Through this miscommunication and tension (grounded in different and differing competing ideological and theoretical assumptions), some attempt to claim an epistemological neutrality about engagement. This claim for neutrality is itself a politically conservative and techno-rational position on engagement and education (Walkerdine, 1983). Locating engagement in the individual student leads to an essentialisation and reification of engagement; students (teachers and the community) are therefore engaged when the school is an engaging place. Engagement must not be 10
    
    disconnected from time, place and space and it is not about finding the reproducible program (Zyngier and Gale, 2003) regardless of social contexts and ideologies. Critical - transformative engagement While a student centred pedagogy sees engagement through the student’s exploration and discovery of individual interests and experiences, a critically transformative or generative pedagogy (Zyngier, 2003) perceives student engagement as rethinking these experiences and interests increasingly in communal and social terms for the creation of a more just and democratic community and not just the advancement of the individual. All students should be able to see themselves as represented in a curriculum that challenges hierarchical and oppressive relations that exist between different social groups. Newmann concludes that all schools can change their pedagogical practices so that they ‘deliver [such an] authentic pedagogy equally to students regardless of gender, socioeconomic status, race or ethnicity (Newmann, 1996). Canadian research (Vibert and Shields, 2003, 8) found that the schools where student engagement was conceived critically were more likely to be located in low socio-economic status communities, because these schools had acknowledged traditional responses as notable failures (for an Australian perspective see Zyngier & Gale, 2003) and hence different approaches were required. This perspective acknowledges that the lives and work of teachers and students (and their families) are inherently political; the lives of children and their communities are a curriculum of life (Smith et al., 1998, 2001) not just connected to student experience, but also actively and consciously critiquing that experience. Not only is their world valued, but students are given the opportunity to voice and discover their own authentic and authoritative life in order to retrieve the learning agenda (Giddens, 1994, 121). Gale and Densmore explain that this is not achieved through “pedagogic trickery” (2000, 149) or through simply “bolting on” some aspects of so-called real-life education experiences into the curriculum. They explain that what is required in the classroom is a pedagogy where
    [t]he very nature of what is learnt is mediated by the group; the content becomes entwined in who these students are as people. Moreover, it reworks the test of isolation that students face in the classroom that are organized to (re)produce their disconnectedness. (Gale and Densmore, 2000, 149)
    
    Conclusions
    Important work is currently being undertaken in Australia (and elsewhere) on the kinds of pedagogies that improve outcomes for all students, (Lingard et al., 2001a, Lingard et al., 2001b) but in particular those variously labeled as “at-risk” of early school leaving, disadvantaged or from low socio-economic backgrounds. Rather than cynically theorise over what is wrong in teacher education today, or in urban schools, or in public schools in general, or present another case study relating more of the same, this research suggests a realistic alternative to disengagement and alienation and school failure for many children, particularly those on the margins, through the creation of a generative pedagogy based on and in radical recognitive social justice (Gale and Densmore, 2000). For young people “at risk”, there is already too often an assumption that they are at best, poor learners. Through their own fault, or their parents’, or decisions made by
    
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    the school, or blind fate, it is assumed that these young people are able to exercise only limited control over their destinies. Many young people do not (wish to) see it that way (Zyngier, 2004, Brown and Holdsworth, 2001, 117). The lives of these young people who have been termed “at risk” are buffeted, constrained, blocked and diverted by social, human, economic, political and geographical factors. In an uncertain future, these factors may seem to remove any element of choice. Yet these same young people still assert strongly that they are in control: ‘“no-one makes decisions for me”; “we don’t know where we are going, but we’ll get there”’ (Brown and Holdsworth, 2001, 118-119). In the end it is about what the students themselves say and think (Zyngier, 2004).
    It is the students themselves who will be able to tell us that they are engaged and who will say whether their education is working for them in a culturally sensitive and relevant way. It is the students who will be able to tell us whether the offers that education purports to provide are real or illusionary. It is at the messy point of teachers and students responding to each other in relation to classroom discourse and assessment practices where we are truly going to see whether or not students feel that school is for them. It is within this space that education can provide a chance that is not illusionary, and that it can indeed be engaging and lead to purposeful, relevant and productive educational outcomes. (McFadden and Munns, 2002, 364)
    
    It has been too simplistic to define engagement in terms of deficiencies arising in the students. Historically the disengaged were those whose appearance, language, culture, values, communities and family structures were in contradiction to the dominant (white, middle class) culture that schools were designed to serve and support (Hickson and Tinzman, 1990, Alexander, 2000). The struggle over the definition of the term engagement is significant in itself for it reveals the on-going ideological and epistemological divisions among educators and policy makers, and the general public. Research on student disengagement has shown that an exploration of the questions of class, gender, race/ethnicity, power, history and particularly students’ lived experiences and social reality reveal complexity of factors that led marginalized youth to leave school prematurely. It is therefore crucial that questions of power, equity, engagement with difference, that is recognitive social justice (Gale and Densmore, 2000), be addressed if we are to improve (learning) outcomes, not just for the most marginalized youth, but for all. The research suggests that the complexity of issues relating to youth engagement (and early school leaving), cannot be fitted neatly into decontextualized accounts of youth experience, school interaction and socioenvironmental factors that create in the first instance student disempowerment and disengagement with school (Sefa Dei, 2003, 249). In order to create a more inclusive and empowering education system, one that engages with and responds to marginalized youth we need to ensure that all students, not just the mainstream majority, feel that they belong and identify. In order to do this we
    … need to tap into the cultural knowledge of parents, guardians and community workers - this means that we value the different perspectives and knowledges that all people from all places have and can bring into the school system. (Sefa Dei, 2003, 250-51)
    
    Critically, if students are to successfully engage in school and their knowledge systems, then these systems must connect to and engage with the students’ cultural knowledge while also ‘affirming the different strengths that knowledge forms bring to classroom pedagogy’ (Sefa Dei, 2003). This is critical if those most at risk are to find themselves in schools, so that their knowledges, histories and experiences are validated and accounted for. Such student engagement is an empowering one 12
    
    developing a sense of entitlement, belonging and identification. Otherwise students are ‘doing time, not doing education’ (Sefa Dei, 2003). For many marginalized students schools are not seen as the sites of engagement, but of disenfranchisement and alienation. This means that our public education system is failing these students, failing to provide them with the necessary equitable environment required for the delivery of social justice (Sefa Dei, 2000, 270). If teachers have low expectations for groups of students it is easy to assign responsibility for the lack of achievement to the home or to the student rather than to what the teacher and the school does (Smith et al., 2001). When the system does not work, there is always plenty of blame to go around. We will be told that the problem lies with disaffected youth, negligent parents, the (overworked, underpaid) teacher(s), the school environment, et cetera. We could equally look for cause (s) in the many systemic barriers to the educational and employment achievements of marginalized young people. Dodd (1995) suggests that the best advice is to be found in The Little Prince ‘What is essential is invisible to the eye.’ Instead of adding to this cycle of blame which inevitably can lead only to more failure we should be looking to make our education of youth, all youth, but in particular those from the margins, more critically connected to the social and cultural backgrounds from which they come, making it a less alienating and marginalising experience. There is no guaranteed panacea. But for the sake of social justice we must begin to rethink what we do in the classroom, whether it is about schooling - a process where we socialize children to conform to the dominant cultural paradigm or about education - the empowerment of individuals and groups to critically reflect on and remake their society (Sefa Dei, 2000, 271).
    
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    Alexander, R. J. (2000) Culture and pedagogy : international comparisons in primary education, Blackwell, Oxford. Apple, M. (1996) Cultural Politics and Education, Teachers College Press, New York. Bangert-Drowns, R. L. and Pyke, C. (2001) A taxonomy of student engagement with educational software: An exploration of literate thinking with electronic text, Journal of Educational Computing Research, 24 3, 213-234. Bangert-Drowns, R. L. and Pyke, C. (2002) Teacher ratings of student engagement with educational software: An exploratory study, Educational Technology Research and Development, 50 2, 23-38. Bernstein, B. (1996) Pedagogy, symbolic control, and identity : theory, research, critique, Taylor & Francis, London ; Washington, D.C. Brown, J. and Holdsworth, R. (2001) Building Relationships Making Education Work. A Report on the Perspectives of Young People, The Commonwealth Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs by the Australian Centre for Equity through Education and the Australian Youth Research Centre, Canberra. Butler-Kisber, L. and Portelli, P. (2003) Editorial: The challenges of student engagement:beyond mainstream conceptions and practices, McGill Journal of Education, 38 2, 207. Cumming, J. (1996) From Alienation to Engagement: Opportunities for reform in the middle years of schooling: Key Findings and Recommendations, Australian Curriculum Studies Association, Canberra, ACT, Day, S. (2002) Real Kids, Real Risks: Effective Instruction of Students at Risk of Failure, NASSP Bulletin, 86 632, 19-32. Department of Education & Training (2004) On Track, 1 March 2004 http://www.llen.vic.gov.au/llen/ontrack/default.htm Dodd, A. W. (1995) Engaging Students: What I Learned Along the Way, Educational Leadership, 53 1, 65-67. Emmer, E. T. and Gerwels, M. C. (2002) Cooperative learning in elementary classrooms: Teaching practices and lesson characteristics, The Elementary School Journal, 103 1, 75. Finn, J. D. (1989) Withdrawing From School, Review of Educational Research, 59 2, 117-142. Finn, J. D., Pannozzo, G. M. and Achilles, C. M. (2003) The "why's" of class size: Student behavior in small classes, Review of Educational Research, 73 3, 321. Fredericks, J., Bluemnfeld, P., Friedel, J. and Paris, A. (2003) School Engagement, Indicators of Positive Development Conference, Washington DC, 11 -13 March, Fullarton, S. (2002) Student Engagement With School: Individual And School-Level Influences, Australian Council for Educational Research ACER, Melbourne, July. Gale, T. and Densmore, K. (2000) Just Schooling: explorations in the cultural politics of teaching, Open University Press, London. Giddens, A. (1994) Beyond left and right : the future of radical politics, Polity Press in association with Blackwell, Cambridge [England]. Goodlad, J. (1984) A place called School, McGraw Hill, New York. Haberman, M. (1991) The Pedagogy of Poverty Versus Good Teaching, Phi Delta Kappan, 73 4, 290. 14
    
    Hargraves, A. (2001) Emotional Geographies of Teaching, Teachers College Record, 103 6, 1056-1080. Hickson, J. and Tinzman, M. B. (1990) Who are the "at-risk" students of the 1990s?, 30 January 2004 http://ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/rpl_esys/equity.htm Kanpol, B. (1997a) Issues and trends in critical pedagogy, Hampton Press, Cresskill, N.J. Kanpol, B. (1997b) Reflective Critical Inquiry on Critical Inquiry: A Critical Ethnographic Dilemma Continued, The Qualitative Report [On-line serial] http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR3-4/kanpol.html, Volume 3 Number 4. Leithwood, K. and Jantzi, D. (2000) The effects of transformational leadership on organizational conditions and student engagement with school, Journal of Educational Administration, 38 2, 112. Lingard, B., Ladwig, J. and et al. (2001a) Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study. Lingard, B., Ladwig, J. and et al. (2001b) Queensland School Reform Longitudinal Study: Supplementary Materials, Brisbane, Luse, P. L. (2002) Speedwriting: A teaching strategy for active student engagement, The Reading Teacher, 56 1, 20. Marks, H. M. (2000) Student Engagement in Instructional Activity: Patterns in the Elementary, Middle and High School Years, American Educational Research Journal, 37 1, 153-184. McFadden, M. and Munns, G. (2002) Student engagement and the social relations of pedagogy, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 23 3, 357-366. McMahon, B. J. (2003) Putting the elephant into the refrigerator: Student engagement, critical pedagogy and antiracist education, McGill Journal of Education, 38 2, 257. Newmann, F. M. (1981) Reducing Student Alienation in High Schools: Implications of Theory, Harvard Educational Review, 51 4, 546-564. Newmann, F. M. (1986) Priorities for the future: Towards a common agenda, Social Education, 50 240-250. Newmann, F. M. (1992) Student engagement and achievement in American secondary schools, Teachers College Press, New York. Newmann, F. M. (1996) Authentic achievement : restructuring schools for intellectual quality, Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco. Quinn, D. M. (2002) The impact of principal leadership behaviors on instructional practice and student engagement, Journal of Educational Administration, 40 4/5, 447. Schlechty, P. C. (2002) Working on the work : an action plan for teachers, principals, and superintendents, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco. Sefa Dei, G. J. (2003) Schooling and the dilemma of youth disengagement, McGill Journal of Education, 38 2, 241. Shapiro, H. S. (1990) Between capitalism and democracy : educational policy and the crisis of the welfare state, Bergin & Garvey, New York. Shor, I. (1980) Critical teaching and everyday life, South End Press, Boston. Smith, W., Butler-Kisber, L., LaRoque, L., Portelli, J., Shields, C., Sparkes, C. and Vibert, A. (1998, 2001) Student Engagement in Learning and School Life: National Project Report, Faculty of Education McGill University Montreal, Thomson, P. (2002) Schooling the rustbelt kids : making the difference in changing times, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, N.S.W.
    
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