Engaging student input on student engagement in learning

Abstract

Student engagement, achievement, and participation are equity issues. Students’ engagement in their learning is especially important in schools that cater to lowincome communities where improved educational experiences can break the cycle of low achievement, school disaffection, and early school leaving. Moreover, for students who experience disadvantage in their lives, having input into their learning enables and supports a sense of connectedness, with learning and with school. This paper reports on a youth participatory action research project (YPAR) that took a rights-based approach to researching with students. The study was conducted in an Australian government secondary school situated in a context of disadvantage. The student-researchers, who faced socioeconomic disadvantage in their own lives, investigated students’ experiences of engagement in learning in the first four years of secondary school. The findings demonstrated that students from a low socioeconomic community, including students who tended to be marginalized in conventional classroom contexts, had thoughtful and important contributions to make about their engagement in learning. The paper also reports on ways in which the participatory research design impacted upon the studentresearchers and the school community. Importantly, the student-researchers valued the research opportunity and there was evidence of the impact of their investigations within and beyond the school.