Hallazgos

In addition to behavioural, cognitive and affective aspects, learners‘ engagement also has ‗an interpersonal component‘ (Handelsman et al, 2005: 185). According to Smagorinsky et al, engagement lies in ‗the relational frameworks … that students establish with their teachers and among themselves‘ (2007: 77-8). It transcends the individual‘s behaviour, affect, and cognition to the social interaction between individuals in a social setting such as the language classroom. Nystrand and Gamoran argue that ‗student engagement involves more than individual students: more precisely, it involves the interaction of students and teachers‘ (1991: 269). Social Engagement is ‗essentially linked to interaction and to learners‘ initiation and maintenance (or not) of it‘ (Svalberg, 2009: 252). Examples of that would be ‗where the teacher picks up on the substance of a student's response and where, consequently, the topic is sustained across conversation turns‘ (Nystrand and Gamoran, 1991: 266).

88

Based on what has preceded, the approach I am taking to investigate engagement is that in addition to its behavioural and ‗cognitive aspects it crucially involves a range of social and affective phenomena and that it is this complexity which justifies the construct‘ (Svalberg, 2009: 243). Fredricks et al. ‗recommend studying engagement as a multifaceted construct‘ (2004: 59) and ‗call for richer characterizations of how students behave, feel, and think - research that could aid in the development of finely tuned interventions‘ (Bold added, ibid.). The few

studies which have investigated engagement as a construct have done so in non- language learning settings (e.g. Handelsman et al, 2005; Caulfield, 2010). The current interventional action research, therefore, responds to the scarcity of research in this area by investigating the behavioural, cognitive, affective, and social components of learners‘ engagement in a language learning context.

Although Handelsman et al ‗developed a reliable, valid, and multidimensional measure of college student course engagement‘ (2005: 185), they ‗measured engagement at only one point in the semester‘ (ibid. 190). They ‗found evidence of four interpretable and internally consistent factors: skills, emotional, participation/interaction, and performance‘ (2005: 190) but only in general terms that were not directed toward particular activities and materials (see the table below).

89

Skills Emotional Part/Interaction Performance

Making sure to study on a regular basis

Putting forth effort Doing all the homework problems

Staying up on the readings Looking over class notes between classes to make sure I understand the material

Being organized

Taking good notes in class Listening carefully in class Coming to class every day

Finding ways to make the course material relevant to my life

Applying course material to my life Finding ways to make the course interesting to me Thinking about the course between class meetings Really desiring to learn the material

Raising my hand in class Asking questions when I don't understand the instructor

Having fun in class Participating actively in small-group discussions Going to the professor's office hours to review assignments or tests or to ask questions Helping fellow students Getting a good grade Doing well on the tests Being confident that I can learn and do well in the class

Table 3-4 (Handelsman et al., 2005: 187)

Factor Structure of Student Course Engagement Questionnaire

The other study that investigated engagement as a construct was Caulfield‘s (2010). ‗A model utilizing affective, behavioural and cognitive attributes was developed to measure graduate student engagement in learning tasks (2010: 1). In Caulfield‘s study, ‗91 masters‘ students identified learning tasks that were most and least engaging‘ (ibid.). Quantitative, rather than qualitative, methods were used to collect the data. ‗Student survey data demonstrated a direct relationship between perceived value of the learning task, perceived effort put forth in achieving the learning task and perceived student engagement in learning‘ (ibid.). ‗Results derived from a repeated measures t-test indicated that students performed significantly better, as measured by grades (p = .003), on learning tasks identified as most engaging when compared to learning tasks identified as least engaging‘ (ibid.).

90

Given that both Handelsman et al.‘s (2005) and Caulfield‘s studies used quantitative measures, they are of little direct relevance to my research. In a recent paper entitled ‗Engagement with language: interrogating a construct‘, Svalberg ‗has attempted to provide an essentially dynamic model of Engagement itself, i.e. a model of what ‗goes on‘ when there is Engagement, and in doing so to bring together, in a principled way, a variety of aspects of a highly complex environment (notably the language classroom)‘ (2009: 256). She has provided a comprehensive definition of Engagement with Language that accounts for its being a construct:

In the context of language learning and use, Engagement with language (Engagement) is a cognitive, and/or affective, and/or social state and a process in which the learner is the agent and language is object (and sometimes vehicle).

Cognitively, the Engaged individual is alert, pays focused attention and constructs their own knowledge.

Affectively, the Engaged individual has a positive, purposeful, willing, and autonomous disposition towards the object (language, the language and/or what it represents)

Socially, the Engaged individual is interactive and initiating (2009: 247).

In her model (see table 3-5), Svalberg (2009) has also identified factors that facilitate or impede learners‘ engagement. Although different from my developed analytical framework for learners‘ engagement with internet materials (see table 6-1), her model‘s comprehensive approach to engagement as a multi-dimensional construct that could be facilitated and impeded has inspired the analysis of my research. Her hope is ‗for any researcher wishing to conduct research on Engagement, the model … might help inform the choice of research design and measurement instruments, as well as the approach to data analysis, and that it will also stimulate a critical debate on related issues‘ (Emphasis added, ibid. 256).

91

Cognitive Affective Social Key characteristics of Engagement State: heightened alertness, focused attention Process: focused reflection and problem solving

State: positive orientation towards the language, the interlocutor, and/or what they represent

Process: willingness to interact with the language and/or interlocutor is maintained/heightened

State: behavioural readiness to interact Process: initiating and responding positively to interaction

Facilitators and impediments

Energy levels (time of day, state of health, low adrenaline, etc.)

Immediate

surroundings (noise, lighting, temperature, movement, colours) Emotional state (stress, worries; serenity) Training (educational background; culture of learning prior knowledge) Task/activity design (task demands within zone of proximal development, match with learning style) Teaching approach; teacher behaviour

Personality type (extrovert/introvert); L self-perception (of own knowledge and ability; self-confidence) Trust (how well do Ls know/like each other?); Topic (interesting, offensive, relevant topic/content)

Clarity of procedure and purpose (how and why should the task/activity be done?) Intrinsically motivating quality of task/activity (e.g. relevance of purpose; right level of intellectual challenge; expected success; competitive element; opportunity to engage in identity construction) Power differentials (equal/different status; gate keeper dependant; equal/different language proficiency; language [variety] status) Gender (same/different socialisation; cultural/ religious restrictions) Social/cultural belonging (shared/different values, schemata) Social networks (family, friends, colleagues, neighbours)

Table 3-5 Factors which facilitate or impede engagement (Svalberg, 2009: 255)

This model will be discussed later in Chapter Six after I present my analytical framework for learners‘ engagement with internet materials which has been inductively and deductively developed (based on the literature and the data).

In the following section, I review the research studies that have investigated learners‘ engagement in internet-assisted environments. I also identify gaps and highlight the contribution of this research to the area of Internet-Assisted Learners‘ Engagement.

92