Glimpsing Student Engagement

Abstract

There is a very large body of research on student engagement in higher education. This book summarizes and builds on that literature by exploring a new direction for student engagement. This first chapter overviews the book by introducing some of its key features. It summarizes the main ideas informing the engagement construct, identifies shortcomings with it and argues for the need of new thinking. It grapples with the thorny issue of defining student engagement, discusses theoretical assumptions supporting it and details the purposes, assumptions and structure of the book. The chapter makes clear that this is not an empirically driven ‘how to do’ engagement book. While it does not ignore practice, the book is developed as a result of an ongoing and in depth engagement with theory.