From Compliance to Owning the Future

A Q&A with engagement researcher Amy Berry 

For as long as classrooms have existed, teachers have tried to figure out ways to get students engaged in their classwork—and if they’re lucky, get them curious and excited about it, too. But a lot of the advice teachers get on how to do that isn’t helpful and isn’t based in evidence, says Australian researcher Amy Berry. 

Engagement is about a lot more than enjoyment, says Berry, author of Reimagining Student Engagement: From Disrupting to Driving and The Engagement Partnership. Instead of relying on tips and shortcuts to try to “hook” students into academic material, Berry says in this fascinating interview, schools and educators should learn how engagement happens in the brain, and work on building students’ “competence and confidence.” That kind of engagement, says Berry, can lead to a lifetime of growth and agency. 

Amy Berry’s “engagement continuum” and her focus on helping schools design fulfilling learning experiences sit at the heart of Opportunity Education’s work. Her influence runs through OE’s PIOD framework — our own continuum for creating shared language, designing schools and classrooms, and measuring students’ progression from Disengaging to Participating to Investing to Owning to Driving.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Opportunity Education: What first interested you about student engagement? Was there a catalyzing event or experience? 

Amy Berry: I always enjoyed working with young children. In undergrad, I worked for the University of California in Santa Barbara’s Early Learning Center. I was in the 18 months to two- or three-year-old group. I really got hooked on how fabulous it is to be a part of someone else’s joyful learning. When you’re two, the world is a pretty joyful place. A simple walk around the garden is filled with discoveries and insights and excitement and wonder and that just really cemented for me, ‘this is what I want to do.’ 

After marrying my husband and moving to Australia, this time I was working at a local high school, and I was in charge of what I fondly called the “naughty kids room.” It was actually called the “responsible thinking classroom.” But basically, students, mostly boys, got sent out of their classrooms for a failure to comply with whatever the teacher wanted them to do. They got sent to me, and that was a really powerful experience, one that has stuck with me. I still think about how heartbreaking it was to understand that for many young people, school was a daily reminder of their failings as a student, as a learner, you know, even as a person. 

So that really lit the fire, how can we do better by all children? How can we make school a place that is a positive experience for everyone, and one where everyone feels engaged in their learning, and confident in their skills as a learner to make progress and be successful?

Opportunity Education: Is there something developmental about teenagers that makes school harder for them?

Amy Berry: A number of things are going on for them that creates the potential for more friction within the school environment. Peers become really important. Often young children just idolize their teachers and just want to please them, but there is a natural shift as they get older to focusing on peers. That’s not to say that we are not still important—a lot of young people in schools really value having strong connections with their teachers. They see the connection with the teacher as an essential part of being able to really engage in their learning and be successful. When that connection is not there, it makes it difficult for them to remain engaged in learning.

Opportunity Education: Why is being engaged with school so important for students themselves?

Amy Berry: We know it matters, and it matters in lots of different ways. In general terms, the more engaged a person is in their learning at school, the better position they are in to make progress, to achieve success academically. We also know it benefits their wellbeing. We do have a lot of young people who might be on the surface ticking the boxes, in terms of turning up and doing as they’re told. But that’s not the same as being fully engaged and invested in what they’re learning. When we get those partial levels of the box-ticking kind of engagement, that can come at the expense of that individual’s wellbeing, and their ability to thrive within the school environment.

Opportunity Education: Was there a moment when you started this research that caused you to reframe how you thought about engagement? Did anything surprise you?

Amy Berry: I discovered that we know very little about how teachers think about and talk about engagement within the context of their classroom. And we know even less about how children and young people think about it. So that became my interest area—how do we build the bridge? 

We talk often about translating research into practice—but I decided, what about if I come over on the other side, the teacher side, and see if I can start to build it from the other side, and maybe we might make some more progress that way? 

Opportunity Education: You created a new framework to help educators and leaders think about student engagement that highlights a continuum of behaviors and attitudes. Can you describe it?

I started doing interviews with teachers, asking, “How do you know when your students are engaged in learning? What do you look for and listen for? How do you know when they’re really engaged?”

Amy Berry: I started doing interviews with teachers, asking, “How do you know when your students are engaged in learning? What do you look for and listen for? How do you know when they’re really engaged?” It’s important to ask both questions, because if you just ask one, you only get part of the story. If I would have gone in and just asked teachers, how do you know when students are engaged? Their first instinct is to tell me the ordinary daily engagement they look for—are they paying attention? Are they on task? Are they following instructions? That kind of thing. 

But when I asked them, How do you know when they’re really engaged in what they’re learning? Suddenly it opened up, there were a lot of higher level things they were looking for. They don’t want to stop what they’re doing. They’re completely immersed in it. They’re asking questions that are designed to take their understanding to a deeper level. They’re making connections with other things that they’ve done and learned. 

From that work came the continuum of engagement. It represents the range that teachers describe engagement and disengagement based on their experiences in the classroom. Three forms of disengagement—disrupting, avoiding and withdrawing; and three forms of engagement—participating, investing and driving. They range from passive forms through to more active forms.

Then I asked them, “How do you know when they’re disengaged?” to get an understanding of the full range. From that work came the continuum of engagement. It represents the range that teachers describe engagement and disengagement based on their experiences in the classroom. Three forms of disengagement—disrupting, avoiding and withdrawing; and three forms of engagement—participating, investing and driving. They range from passive forms through to more active forms. 

Not only does it resonate with teachers’ experiences, but they seem to find it a useful lens for thinking about engagement within their context. I think the benefit of it is being a little more clear of what we mean when we use these big umbrella terms of “engaged” and “disengaged,” but also expanding our thinking about engagement so we challenge ourselves to move beyond.

Opportunity Education: In your interviews with students about the continuum, what did you learn? 

Amy Berry: I had a hunch that when it came to participating, students and teachers would probably be on the same page, and there wouldn’t be much in the way of discrepancies. And that’s true—students know all about participating. Let’s face it, that’s where many students live in the engagement continuum, most the time they’re sitting in the classroom at school. 

There were some misconceptions on the part of students, ideas that being a good learner and being engaged in your learning means that you find learning easy, that you’re quick to get your work done in comparison to your peers, that you don’t need help. When we focus on this idea of performing and always getting it right and not making mistakes and finding it easy, then we’re really making it more challenging for students to want to take risks and stretch themselves.

The other area that I had a hunch about, and it was true, is that for teachers, withdrawing—the passive form of disengagement—is a real blind spot for us. The whole point of withdrawing is to go unnoticed, fly under the radar. And from a very young age, students can develop quite effective strategies for going unnoticed. We could shine a spotlight onto withdrawing and understand it much more by talking to the learners than we ever could by talking to teachers.

Opportunity Education: How many students withdraw, fly under the radar? 

Amy Berry: I would say it’s in epidemic proportions in many schools. I could almost guarantee you that in any given lesson, teachers will have some students who have drifted into withdrawing at some point. If you don’t think that’s true, just think about yourself sitting in a staff meeting—we’re not built to be on all the time, there’s a limit. As adults, we know what it feels like to just have your attention drift and start thinking about other things.

The challenge as a teacher is that students get very good at playing the game. Change the rules of the game can catch them off guard and it can work for a while, but students soon learn the rules of that game. It’s a never-ending battle—you can’t just have one trick. You have to mix it up, because it’s almost like they’re wired to figure out the game.

Opportunity Education: You make a clear distinction between just participating and what you call “owning and driving” your learning. What’s the difference? 

Amy Berry: Teachers sometimes see the continuum and immediately say, “Right, participating is bad, driving is good.” But participating is not about following the rules of school, it’s not about staying out of trouble and pleasing the teacher. That’s compliance. Participating is about learning. It’s the most passive form of engaging, but many skills at the participating level are really important and crucial for learning. Being able to manage disruptions and distractions is an important skill, being able to listen carefully to instructions to know what to do and how to do it—that’s an important skill for learning. Being explicit with students about why that’s important, and that it’s not about pleasing the teacher, it’s not about following the rules, this is about helping yourself learn. 

I like to think of participating in terms of, I’m open to learning, I’m here, I’m ready. I’m open to learning something new, or changing my mind about something. That’s the state that I want to be in, not tell-me-what-to-do mode. 

I like to think of participating in terms of, I’m open to learning, I’m here, I’m ready. I’m open to learning something new, or changing my mind about something. That’s the state that I want to be in, not tell-me-what-to-do mode. 

At the investing level, we start to see hearts and minds. I’m interested, I’m curious, I want to know more. I’m inspired. Young people have lots of different words to describe this state of being: enthusiastic, inspired, interested, passionate. It’s also about being immersed in what you’re doing—when we lose track of time, or don’t want to stop, or we’re inspired to connect with another person and discuss what we’re learning. That’s investing at the driving level. Students are focused on their own improvement, have a clear goal in mind, taking actions like reflection, self-assessment, self-evaluation, seeking feedback. Knowing when I need help and knowing how to get that help is a key driving behavior. 

Teachers get ther wrong idea and think that driving is this big thing that only certain students can get to in only certain kinds of circumstances. When we think of driving as a big event, we’re missing the daily opportunities for students to practice driving skills. So I prefer to challenge teachers to think about daily driving, where there are opportunities in every single lesson for students to get in the driver’s seat and practice. 

Opportunity Education: A lot of suggestions for teachers on how to get students engaged isn’t very useful, or is too simplistic, boiling it down to “make it relevant” or “make it fun.” Do you think those are good priorities? 

Amy Berry: I’ve thought a lot about this. Number one, teachers are not short on advice. I understand the appeal of, here’s your top five strategies for engaging your students. Makes it seem like what we’re after is a quick fix, and that annoys me and frustrates me, because I think, why do we continue to set teachers up for failure and frustration? 

It’s not a quick fix. It’s complex and not that simple. Other unhelpful messaging in all of this is teachers are given advice to “hook them in.” “We’ve got to get them engaged, re-engage them, keep them engaged.” This messaging makes it seem like the responsibility is completely on the shoulders of the teacher, something we do to students or for them, but not something we do with them. That’s unhelpful too, because we are only going to get so far in pushing and pulling students in the direction that we want them to go. That’s not engagement. At best, you’re getting compliance. 

So what’s the right pathway? We got an insight into it in our last study with students. We ran a really simple survey, students were given two prompts: I enjoy learning at school, and I think I’m a good learner. Then a rating, I agree, strongly disagree, etc. We’ve known for some time in education that as students move through the school system, their engagement takes a downward trajectory. In the case of our survey, we asked about enjoyment. I know enjoyment and engagement are not exactly the same thing, but they are connected. We saw the same pattern—from the minute they get into school, their enjoyment of learning goes downward. 

The worrying part was that their confidence in themselves as learners also declines as they move through. After 13 years in the system, they were at their lowest level of confidence in themselves as a learner. Now, to me, that’s a disaster, but I also think that these two things are connected. We cannot just focus on their enjoyment when we’re wanting to improve engagement, trying to hook into their interests and make it relevant and help them to see the value—that’s an important part of it, but it’s not the whole thing. Sometimes at school, we have to learn things that are just not interesting to us, and we can’t really see the value in it, but we still need to learn it. So what do we do in those times then we’re kind of not really equipping them with the full toolbox of strategies they’re going to need? We also need to look at their competence and confidence in themselves as learners. How are we intentionally and explicitly equipping them with that as they move through school? That is something that we don’t often talk about when we’re talking about improving engagement, but that’s a really great pathway for supporting engagement in the classroom.

Opportunity Education: Teachers have said that after Covid, more students are willing to check out, or even less willing to try. Add the distraction of laptops and smartphones and screens on top of that—has modern life made it harder for students to engage with their learning, or has it always been hard?

Amy Berry:  Teachers are telling me it feels different now, especially those who have been teaching for a long time. I believe them. I believe that classrooms feel different than they did pre-Covid. 

I think it probably didn’t just have an impact on the students. If we’re honest, it probably had an impact on us, too. Many students that we talked to in our secondary focus groups, when they talk about strategies they use for avoiding or procrastinating—digital devices are right up there. They are a big strategy for avoiding, and students themselves admit that. But how many adults also use our devices as a way of avoiding and procrastinating?

Opportunity Education: Are there two or three things schools should think about, if they want to start on this journey, to think about this more seriously. Where should they start?

Amy Berry: It depends on your context. Finding people that have a level of motivation and interest in having a go, as we say in Australia, in taking this forward, they will be your drivers. Sometimes we call these people early adopters. 

Some schools are fans of an all-in approach. I like a whole-school approach, but that doesn’t mean we keep everybody locked into the same pathway and moving at the same pace at the same time. If you’ve got people who are ready to drive, get out of their way. Let them drive! What’s the worst that can happen? We learn by trying things out, experimenting and then reflecting on the experience of going through that. 

So have a go, find those early adopters and let them loose. As a teacher, don’t try to tackle the problems of the world in one step. We’re working in partnership with students. Do a little step, even if it’s just a five-minute conversation you have with your classroom—remember the things that make it hard for you to learn? Just open a conversation.