Student Engagement in Today's Learning Environments

Engaging the Missing Catalyst of Lasting Instructional Reform

By (author) Justin A. Collins

Hardback - £72.00

Publication date:

05 May 2014

Length of book:

222 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9781610487566

As long as the free market has reigned, private sector firms have confronted a produce-or-perish existence. For a host of reasons, public organizations increasingly face these competitive pressures as well. But public organizations in the most unexpected of places have answered the call to evolve productively with fantastic success. Unfortunately, public schools can rarely be counted among them. Faddish acronym school improvement plans always offer grand results and almost never deliver upon such promises. Understandably, the farther public educational quality slides into decline, the sharper the urge to grope for radical reform plans.

This book, in contrast, argues that a key element of reform has remained in plain view for decades but has gone unmentioned, unmeasured, and unused in reform plans: student engagement. More specifically, quantifying how the instructional time is passed provides not only a sound proxy to educational quality, but is shown to be tightly linked to the test score needle. Of course, the differences across school types and geographies are pronounced. Mindful of such differences, this book discusses each school type according to the hard numbers across buildings.
At a time when public education is both vital for democracy and under attack, Justin Collins offers well-documented and sensible suggestions for educational programs that will train the citizens and leaders for the twenty-first century. A challenging and vibrant read.