Teacher engagement

Abstract

The term «engagement» has flooded through British universities the way that the term «student centred learning» once did, but faster and more irresistibly, drowning everything in its path. And just like «student centred learning» the meaning of «engagement» has become less clear the more it has been used. One of my last public presentations was about seven quite different uses of the term «engagement», in an attempt to try to make sense of all the very different university initiatives I had come across, and their very different rationales, that were all flourishing under the banner of «engagement». It is all very confusing. Nearly all the work undertaken, round the world on «engagement» has been about student engagement, for reasons I discuss below. I would like to comment here on two rather different meanings of «engagement» as the term applies to teachers.