Cognitive engagement involves students to be focused, concentrating on achieving a goal, flexible in their work and are able to cope with failure. It is not just about doing the work, but about the mindset and the process that is happening within students’ heads. This does not insinuate that students must be high achievers, but no matter the academic level they are all working at their own individual level (Fredericks & McColskey, 2012). A lack of cognitive engagement can be seen in the vignette example as no work being completed apart from whole group discussions.

            

Behavioural engagement referrers to the students participating and interacting with learning activities and developing skills in the classroom. This includes appropriate behaviours and attitudes within the classroom and behavioural skills that are needed in senior levels of education such collaboration and communicating with peers (Ibid). Behavioural engagement assists cognitive engagement to occur as it ensures students are physically and mentally ready to learn. In the vignette behavioural engagement that is being tested can be seen through erratic or no attendance, lack of interest in school or the subject, and inappropriate behaviour for a classroom.  

 

Finally, emotional engagement refers to the relationship between students and as well their teacher. Students are engaged when they feel included and feel an emotional bond with people within the school(Department of Education and Early Childhood, 2019; Fredericks & McColskey, 2012). Emotional engagement is being breached within the vignette through little respect for peers within the classroom and the teacher by not completing what is being asked of them. 

 

            From there, numerous researchers have highlighted the innovation and importance of engagement to increase cognitive, behavioural and emotional engagement through six (6) characteristics: “Interaction, exploration, relevancy, multimedia, instruction and authentic assessment (Windham, 2005; Willms, Friesen, & Milton, 2009; Dunleavy & Milton, 2009).” As simple as this may seem, many teachers that I have witnessed on placement struggle with the ability to tailor learning to the needs of its students (AITSL 1.5, 2019). Having already created a new connection/interaction with students my next phase in changing this classroom disengagement would be to shift the way students engage with material. Literature shows that the most effective way in increasing engagement with learners is to shift pedagogical approaches to inquiry based, problem solving and exploratory models. Similar to what I had said in the introduction, where I believe engagement comes from students being able to develop critical creative thinking and decision-making skills in the classroom. This shift to an inquiry classroom can allow students to utilise digital technology, in clicking our own path through cyberspace and selecting the subjects through this exploration rather than accepting a teachers words and being passive learners (Windham, 2005). In changing approaches to teaching and relaying information this would assist in eliminating behaviour and attitudes to work in my VCE history class. Following on from creating an inquiry and scenario-based classroom, relevancy needs to be prevalent where real life situations and scenarios are given where possible opposed to being text based. Once again, the idea is building students understanding, and giving them a sense of purpose within the learning experience(Dunleavy & Milton, 2009; Willms, Friesen, & Milton, 2009). 

 

In order to create these real-world scenarios, we need the assistance of multimedia and technology to interact globally with people and events. This is easy with a VCE history class because it is based on analysing global events. It brings accessibility and relevance to subject matter where they could discover more information about a topic than the teacher now that they are no longer the main source of information (Suárez et al, 2018). This has also been shown to create engagement as students explore ways to present their learning and assist in students controlling their learning (Ibid). studies have shown that as a result of using technology within the classroom, students are more motivated to learn, apply their knowledge to practical problems, and take ownership of their work. Additionally, as a requirement of the Australian and Victorian Curriculum, it is a cross-curricular priority to utilise technology in developing student to become prepared for the 21^st century (ACARA, 2019; VCAA, 2019).  

 

Instruction compromises two factors, engaging pedagogy, and engaging curriculum. Having changed pedagogy in the past points, curriculum is the next area of change in the VCE History class. Being that now there is a greater push for interdisciplinary curriculum the what we teach needs to be more engaging, where cross subject exploration and collaboration and defined as 21^st century skills and a necessity for our current students (Pellegrino & Hilton, 2012). Unlike the curriculums of the past, where focus was on learning the individual subject, the new Australian and Victorian curriculum call for intentionally interdisciplinary understandings (ACARA, 2019; VCAA, 2019). Requiring critical thinking, interpersonal relationship skills, creativity, information, media and technology skills all infused into core content as both process and outcome. Resulting in a richer instructional approach to engage students with the content. 

 

Finally, in proposing innovation for engagement is creating assessment for learning. This calls for teachers to utilise formative assessments to monitor and assess student engagement with sharing conversations on how they are learning (Griffin, McGaw, & Care, 2012). Suggesting that rather than meeting standard expectations, but more on learning for further development and how to fill in knowledge gaps. Standardised testing results in teachers teaching to the test rather than taking interest in learners’ needs, interests, and abelites (Ibid). An example of this could be displayed through a student portfolio, showing their work and understanding for a topic over the period of learning. Additionally, learners explore articulate what they wanted to learn and how they would demonstrate their learning.

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ACARA. (2019, May). Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Capability. Retrieved October 2019, from Australian Curriculum: https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/general-capabilities/information-and-communication-technology-ict-capability/

AITSL. (2019). Australian Professional Standards for Teachers - Graduate Standards. Retrieved October 2019, from Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership: https://www.aitsl.edu.au/teach/standards

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