Optimal Learning Environments to Promote Student Engagement

Optimal Learning Environments to Promote Student Engagement analyzes the psychological, social, and academic phenomena comprising engagement, framing it as critical to learning and development. Drawing on positive psychology, flow studies, and theories of motivation, the book conceptualizes engagement as a learning experience, explaining how it occurs (or not) and how schools can adapt to maximize it among adolescents. Examples of empirically supported environments promoting engagement are provided, representing alternative high schools, Montessori schools, and extracurricular programs. The book identifies key innovations including community-school partnerships, technology-supported learning, and the potential for engaging learning opportunities during an expanded school day. Among the topics covered:

• Engagement as a primary framework for understanding educational and motivational outcomes.
• Measuring the malleability, complexity, multidimensionality, and sources of engagement.
• The relationship between engagement and achievement.
• Supporting and challenging: the instructor’s role in promoting engagement.
• Engagement within and beyond core academic subjects.
• Technological innovations on the engagement horizon.

Optimal Learning Environments to Promote Student Engagement is an essential resource for researchers, professionals, and graduate students in child and school psychology; social work; educational psychology; positive psychology; family studies; and teaching/teacher education.

David J. Shernoff, Ph.D., is an associate professor of educational psychology at Northern Illinois University and visiting associate professor at Rutgers University. He received his doctorate in education from the University of Chicago in 2001. His dissertation work applied Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of flow and experience sampling methodology to the examination of student engagement in high school. From 2001-2003 he served a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he co-managed a grant-funded research project on middle school students’ engagement in school-based after-school programs. While at Northern Illinois University, he has taught courses on adolescent development, educational psychology, and motivation in the classroom to graduate and undergraduate students. His research interests include student motivation and engaging learning environments, engagement in educational video games, and mentoring. His grant-funded empirical work and journal articles related to the topic of engagement have focused on, a) contextual, student, and school influences on student engagement in high school, and the effects of student engagement on short-term and long-term outcomes; b) the influence of school-based after-school programs on middle-school students’ engagement, engaging and disengaging after-school program activities, and engagement in after school programs as a predictor and mediator of social and academic outcomes; c) the impact of a video-game approach to mechanical engineering education on student engagement and learning, and d) the impact of teacher behaviors and the motivational dimensions of the learning environment on student engagement in high school classrooms. His other book titles include Good Mentoring (Jossey-Bass, 2009, with Jeanne Nakamura), The Individual-Maker (William & Sons, 2001), and the forthcoming volume, Engaging Youth in Schools: Evidence-based Models to Guide Future Innovations (Teachers College Record, co-edited with Janine Bempechat). He has served as a reviewer for the National Science Foundation, and serves on the editorial boards for The Journal of Youth and Adolescence and Afterschool Matters. He has been featured in Newsweek, UC Berkeley’s The Greater Good, and other print and online magazines. He has provided a variety of keynote addresses and workshops nationally and internationally. He received the 2010 award for Exceptional Contributions to Scholarly and Creative Activity from Northern Illinois University’s College of Education.