Educators have long appreciated the importance of engagement to student success. But with unprecedented rates of absenteeism threatening to become the new normal—and threatening educators’ abilities to help students recover post-pandemic—the need to get students academically and personally engaged in school is greater than ever before.
Conversations about the current attendance crisis often focus on challenges that originate outside the school walls—for example, those related to family circumstances or a lack of transportation. But “outside factors” aren’t the only ones affecting attendance. Shebby and Porter (2021) note that many students are “voluntarily absent because they are simply not engaged with the classroom materials, their teachers, or both” (p. 76). And feeling disconnected and disengaged from school also plays a key role in students’ decisions to drop out early (Bridgeland et al., 2006). So, if we want to get the absent students back and keep the students who are coming to school from leaving, we need to focus on keeping them engaged.
What can educators do to make school a place where students want to come and want to learn? A place where they’re not just physically present, but willing to exert the mental energy that meaningful learning requires?
The acronym SCORE can guide educators’ efforts to heighten engagement by helping them understand and keep “score” of key factors that can make a difference. It’s as simple as this: If teachers facilitate student Success, if they spark Curiosity, if they invite Originality, and if they foster interpersonal Relationships, they can boost student Engagement. Let’s look at each of these in turn to see why.
When students feel they can accomplish learning tasks successfully, they’re more likely to invest time and effort, even when tasks are challenging.
Success
Success has a powerful effect on people’s emotions, and emotions often drive our behavior. So it’s no surprise that students who struggle often withdraw, disrupt classroom learning, or drop out of school entirely. On the other hand, when students feel they can accomplish learning tasks or goals successfully, they’re more likely to invest time and effort, even when those tasks are challenging (Goodwin et al., 2023; Hattie & Yates, 2014). That’s why finding a “just right” level for students to work at is key—not so hard that they get frustrated and give up, but not so easy that they lose interest.
The Graduated Difficulty framework (Silver et al., 2007) puts students in charge of choosing the right level and managing their learning. Students examine a menu of increasingly difficult tasks, analyze what each level involves, decide where to start working, and move up when they’re ready (see fig. 1). Working at a challenging but comfortable level lets students build the competence and confidence they need to achieve at higher levels. What’s more, analyzing the full range of tasks inspires them to make that jump by letting them see where they’re going and what top-level work requires, assess where they are now, and develop goals and plans for closing the gap.
Research tells us that setting achievable goals, experiencing success, and connecting successes with effort can have a powerful effect on students’ motivation and commitment to learning (Dweck, 2016; Goodwin et al., 2023). But if you’ve ever watched a child work for days, weeks, or months to master a video game, you don’t need research to appreciate the motivational power of Graduated Difficulty. It motivates in the same way video games do—by drawing on a natural desire to reach the top level, by providing immediate feedback about performance, and by triggering the sense of pride and accomplishment that comes from “leveling up.”
Pairing positive feedback with constructive feedback is another way to facilitate that same sense of pride and accomplishment, while simultaneously encouraging growth. The Glow & Grow technique (see fig. 2) promotes this kind of balanced feedback by having teachers point out what students have done well (what “glows”) and where their work can “grow.”
Curiosity
If we want students to absorb and retain what we teach, then capturing their interest is crucial. As Bryan Goodwin and colleagues (2023) remind us, “If your students don’t pay attention to what’s going on in your classroom—if they don’t find it interesting, relevant, or meaningful—you can be assured they will not learn it” (p. 25).
The challenge educators face, of course, is how to get students curious about classroom content they might not naturally be interested in. After all, few students come to class saying things like, “Linear equations? Let’s get started!” or “I’ve always been dying to learn about osmosis!”
So how can we stimulate interest while still teaching the content we need to teach? Opening lessons with curiosity-sparking questions can make any content more captivating, especially when those questions invite students to explore puzzling facts or content-related “mysteries” like these:
- How is it possible that the U.S. presidential candidate who wins the most votes doesn’t always win the election?
- How is it possible that burning a forest can be good for its health?
- How is it possible that changing the order of operations can change the solution?
- Why would health experts say it’s better to cough and sneeze into your elbow than into your hand?
Making the content “mysterious” isn’t the only way to capture students’ attention. Try making content more relevant to students’ lives—for example, by using the analogy of a teenage breakup to engage students in exploring the colonists’ “breakup” with Great Britain. Or capitalize on the motivational power of controversy by asking a debate-sparking question to get students talking, such as, “Graphic novels: are they canon-worthy or just kid stuff?” Getting students interested in classroom content doesn’t just make the learning more enjoyable; it actually helps it stick (Gruber et al., 2014).
Originality
Many students long to express themselves and their ideas, but research and experience tell us they often spend more time responding to recall questions and repeating others’ ideas than thinking independently (Mehta & Fine, 2019). This leads to boredom and disengagement.
A simple remedy is to pose fewer “what’s the correct answer” questions and more questions that invite multiple, unique responses. The stems shown in Figure 3 make it easy to design questions like these.
When we pose questions that invite students to share their ideas and opinions, we’re telling them that we value who they are and what they think. What’s more, we’re building the kind of classroom climate that fosters positive attitudes and attendance.
Relationships
This may be the most important factor of all because the relationships that students form with their teachers and peers influence how they feel about school, how engaged they are, and how much they learn. According to Silver and Perini (2010), “For many students, the greatest inspiration comes in knowing that they are part of a community” (p. 329). So, if we want these students to want to come to school, we must build that kind of community in our classrooms. We must show our students we care about them, and we must teach them to care about and respect one another.
A simple way to show students we care is to ask them how they’re feeling as they enter the classroom each day. To quickly gauge students’ emotions, post a list of feeling words or emojis on the wall and have students tap the word or image that best captures how they’re feeling. Use a poster like the one shown in Figure 4 or create your own—and think about how to respond to what you learn. Might a student who is having a bad day need a little extra space or slack? Might you be able to turn things around with a kind word or an “I’m here if you want to talk”?
Continue to provide support and encouragement throughout the day by doing what we call EMC (making Every Moment Count). Whether it’s a smile, a compliment, or an “I believe in you,” don’t miss an opportunity to let students know you’re there for them and rooting for them to succeed.
When we focus on academics, we sometimes forget how important it is to address students’ social and emotional needs. Doing so is crucial, however, because emotions, it turns out, control the doorway to learning (Willis, 2007). If students come to school feeling anxious rather than secure, if they feel they can’t rather than they can, if they feel lost rather than loved, then the door will shut, and learning won’t occur.
Engagement
Addressing the barriers to attendance that originate outside the classroom walls is crucial, but we need to look inward as well. We need to ask ourselves as educators what we can do to make students who are voluntarily absent want to re-engage. And we need to keep SCORE—and invite students to keep SCORE through evaluation and feedback—of those elements within our control: our instructional choices and our classroom culture. How engaging are our lessons? How welcoming and supportive are our classrooms? How well do we support the natural drives that all people have to be good at what they do, to explore things that interest them, to express themselves, and to be cared about by others?
The SCORE acronym spells out simple criteria for conducting this kind of assessment—criteria that can help educators see what they’re already doing well and how they can further boost engagement. Yet having the acronym isn’t enough. If the goal is to increase students’ motivation and commitment to learning, teachers also need tools and strategies for putting the pieces of the acronym into practice. The more teachers use tools like the ones we’ve shared to promote success, curiosity, originality, and positive relationships, the more students will want to come to school, the more they will enjoy being there, and the more they will learn. That’s the power of engagement.
Reflect & Discuss
➛ Which SCORE components do you or your school pay most attention to? Which need more attention?
➛ How do you promote success, curiosity, originality, and positive relationships? What more could you do?
➛ Why is it important for students to participate in assessing a classroom’s engagement score?
