Bibliography: Constructive Engagement (page 1 of 2)

This annotated bibliography is curated specifically for the Positive Universe: Peace Education website.  Some of the authors featured on this page include Catherine C. Chase, Jill J. Scevak, Glenda S. Stump, Ke Wu, Michelene T. H. Chi, Becky Francis, Robert H. Cantwell, Talia Esnard, Vonzell Agosto, and Joshua Adams.

Bang, April Hyoeun (2016). The Restorative and Transformative Power of the Arts in Conflict Resolution, Journal of Transformative Education. The discipline of the arts has much to contribute to the field of conflict resolution. This article broadly investigates how artistic engagement facilitates transformative learning and the development of skills and capacities for more constructive engagement with conflict. Many scholar practitioners have acknowledged the widespread use of arts-based approaches to peace-building and conflict resolution. While it is important to know what forms of arts-based approaches are utilized today, more empirical work is needed to explain and evaluate "how" engagement with the arts could foster cooperative relationships and more constructive engagement with conflict even in contexts of intractable conflict. An initial review of the literature, alongside examples of practice and personal reflections, highlights the restorative and transformative power of the arts to foster new perspectives, enhanced capacities for more constructive engagement with conflict, and ultimately, cooperative relationships. [More] Descriptors: Transformative Learning, Conflict Resolution, Interpersonal Relationship, Skill Development

John, Eileen (2018). Allegory and Ethical Education: Stories for People Who Know Too Many Stories, Journal of Philosophy of Education. How can stories contribute to ethical education, when they reach people who have already been shaped by many stories, including ethically problematic ones? This question is pursued here by considering Plato's allegory of the cave, focusing on a reading of it offered by Jonathan Lear. Lear claims that the cave allegory aims to undermine its audience's inheritance of stories. I question the possibility and desirability of that project, especially in relation to ethical education. Some works of contemporary fiction by Jenny Erpenbeck and J. M. Coetzee are discussed as stories that use more complex strategies for ethically constructive engagement with story-saturated audiences. [More] Descriptors: Story Telling, Ethics, Figurative Language, Ethical Instruction

Zhang, Huaihao; Lin, Lijia; Zhan, Yi; Ren, Youqun (2016). The Impact of Teaching Presence on Online Engagement Behaviors, Journal of Educational Computing Research. Guided by the Interactive-Constructive-Active-Passive framework, the purpose of the study was to investigate whether teaching presence would impact online learners' passive, active, constructive, and interactive engagement behaviors. A total of 218 middle-school English teachers participated in an online professional development course. Quantitative data were collected from an online survey and the log files of the online course website. The results of the regression analysis revealed that, by controlling for the potential effects of the demographic variables, learners' perceived teaching presence had a positive impact on their constructive and interactive engagement behaviors but not on their passive or active engagement behaviors. In light of these findings, implications, limitations, and future directions are discussed. [More] Descriptors: Online Courses, Electronic Learning, Teacher Role, Feedback (Response)

Chase, Catherine C.; Marks, Jenna; Malkiewich, Laura J.; Connolly, Helena (2019). How Teacher Talk Guidance during Invention Activities Shapes Students' Cognitive Engagement and Transfer, International Journal of STEM Education. Background: A key question in K-12 STEM education is how best to guide students as they engage in exploratory learning activities so that students develop transferable¬ knowledge. We investigated this question in a study of teacher talk guidance of an exploratory activity called Invention. In this study, teachers worked one-on-one with students, guiding them as they attempted to invent ratio-based equations of physical science phenomena. We applied the interactive, constructive, active, and passive (ICAP) framework as a theoretical lens through which to explore different forms of teacher talk guidance and resulting student talk. The ICAP hypothesis predicts that constructive engagement leads to greater learning than active engagement, which in turn leads to greater learning than passive engagement. However, students do not always enact the type of cognitive engagement that teachers prompt.¬ In this paper, we work towards three¬ goals: (1) to explore the forms of cognitive engagement prompted¬ by teachers and enacted by students¬ in their talk, (2) to¬ test the ICAP hypothesis in the novel context of teacher-student dialog during Invention, and (3) to identify¬ effective forms of teacher talk¬ guidance for Invention activities¬ and other exploratory STEM learning tasks. Results: While the majority of student talk was active, teachers produced an even distribution of constructive, active, and passive prompts. Teacher and student talk types tended to align, such that students often responded with the type of cognitive engagement teachers invited, with the exception of passive talk. In general, teacher talk showed the most robust relationship with students' abilities to¬ transfer, while teacher-student dialog demonstrated a weaker relationship with transfer, and student talk was not significantly related to transfer. Some evidence for the ICAP hypothesis was found, most prominently in teacher talk, where constructive prompts positively predicted transfer, active prompts were not related to transfer, and passive prompts negatively predicted transfer. Conclusions: This research implies that teachers should use a large proportion of constructive prompts and relatively few passive ones when guiding students through Invention tasks, when the goal is to provoke transfer of learning to novel contexts. This work also extends the CAP portion of the ICAP hypothesis to teacher-student dialog and underscores the teacher's critical role in encouraging students to cognitively engage with exploratory STEM tasks in effective ways. [More] Descriptors: Elementary Secondary Education, STEM Education, Learner Engagement, Learning Activities

Cantwell, Robert H.; Bourke, Sid F.; Scevak, Jill J.; Holbrook, Allyson P.; Budd, Janene (2017). Doctoral Candidates as Learners: A Study of Individual Differences in Responses to Learning and Its Management, Studies in Higher Education. A national cohort of doctoral students (n = 1390) completed a suite of metacognitive questionnaires indicating management of affective, intellectual and contingency demands in learning. Responses to the questionnaires were analysed for evidence of individual differences in reported metacognitive behaviours. Three patterns of metacognitive response to doctoral learning were identified through cluster analysis: Constructive Engagement, Struggling to Engage and Disengaged. Central to these clusters was the quality of each student's underlying epistemic framework, and the appropriateness of that framework for doctoral study. Cluster membership was broadly independent of demographic and candidate factors. It is concluded that interventions (supervisory or institutional) need to focus on more than technical aspects of candidacy, and give explicit support to underlying epistemic growth. [More] Descriptors: Individual Differences, Doctoral Programs, Graduate Students, Metacognition

Chi, Michelene T. H.; Adams, Joshua; Bogusch, Emily B.; Bruchok, Christiana; Kang, Seokmin; Lancaster, Matthew; Levy, Roy; Li, Na; McEldoon, Katherine L.; Stump, Glenda S.; Wylie, Ruth; Xu, Dongchen; Yaghmourian, David L. (2018). Translating the ICAP Theory of Cognitive Engagement into Practice, Grantee Submission. ICAP is a theory of active learning that differentiates students' engagement based on their behaviors. ICAP postulates that "Interactive" engagement, demonstrated by co-generative collaborative behaviors, is superior for learning to "Constructive" engagement, indicated by generative behaviors. Both kinds of engagement exceed the benefits of "Active" or "Passive" engagement, marked by manipulative and attentive behaviors, respectively. This paper discusses a 5-year project that attempted to translate ICAP into a theory of instruction using five successive measures: (a) teachers' understanding of ICAP after completing an online module, (b) their success at designing lesson plans using different ICAP modes, (c) fidelity of teachers' classroom implementation, (d) modes of students' enacted behaviors, and (e) students' learning outcomes. Although teachers had minimal success in designing "Constructive" and "Interactive" activities, students nevertheless learned significantly more in the context of "Constructive" than "Active" activities. We discuss reasons for teachers' overall difficulty in designing and eliciting "Interactive" engagement. [This article was published in "Cognitive Science" (EJ1188436).] [More]  [More] Descriptors: Active Learning, Learner Engagement, Outcomes of Education, Learning Theories

Chi, Michelene T. H.; Adams, Joshua; Bogusch, Emily B.; Bruchok, Christiana; Kang, Seokmin; Lancaster, Matthew; Levy, Roy; Li, Na; McEldoon, Katherine L.; Stump, Glenda S.; Wylie, Ruth; Xu, Dongchen; Yaghmourian, David L. (2018). Translating the ICAP Theory of Cognitive Engagement into Practice, Cognitive Science. ICAP is a theory of active learning that differentiates students' engagement based on their behaviors. ICAP postulates that Interactive engagement, demonstrated by co-generative collaborative behaviors, is superior for learning to "Constructive" engagement, indicated by generative behaviors. Both kinds of engagement exceed the benefits of "Active" or "Passive" engagement, marked by manipulative and attentive behaviors, respectively. This paper discusses a 5-year project that attempted to translate ICAP into a theory of instruction using five successive measures: (a) teachers' understanding of ICAP after completing an online module, (b) their success at designing lesson plans using different ICAP modes, (c) fidelity of teachers' classroom implementation, (d) modes of students' enacted behaviors, and (e) students' learning outcomes. Although teachers had minimal success in designing "Constructive" and "Interactive" activities, students nevertheless learned significantly more in the context of "Constructive" than "Active" activities. We discuss reasons for teachers' overall difficulty in designing and eliciting "Interactive" engagement. [More] Descriptors: Active Learning, Learner Engagement, Outcomes of Education, Learning Theories

Lumby, Jacky (2019). Distributed Leadership and Bureaucracy, Educational Management Administration & Leadership. This article considers distributed leadership in the context of the extensive literature on post-bureaucratic organisations. It suggests that both distributed leadership and bureaucracy are ideal types. It outlines the development of bureaucracy as an organisational form, challenges the often-stereotypical criticisms that have damned the theory and questions the withdrawal of the field of educational leadership from constructive engagement. It explores the notion that bureaucracy is conceived as a means of shaping and containing power in a way that is sophisticated and has developed considerably since Weber's original idea. The article also outlines the development of distributed leadership and critiques the assertion that it offers a means of redistributing power, arguing that there is little evidence that this happens in any reliable way. It suggests that such reliance is often based on a limited zero-sum concept of power and a sanitised view of staff and organisations. It concludes that bureaucracy offers a more realistic and deeper engagement with issues of power, and that its rejection, except as a butt of criticism, deliberately ignores an enduring and important aspect of leading organisations. It concludes that educational leaders need to engage positively with bureaucracy if they are to transform education. [More] Descriptors: Leadership Styles, Power Structure, Participative Decision Making, Administrative Organization

Chi, Michelene T. H.; Kang, Seokmin; Yaghmourian, David L. (2017). Why Students Learn More From Dialogue-Than Monologue-Videos: Analyses of Peer Interactions, Journal of the Learning Sciences. In 2 separate studies, we found that college-age students learned more when they collaboratively watched tutorial dialogue-videos than lecture-style monologue-videos. In fact, they can learn as well as the tutees in the dialogue-videos. These results replicate similar findings in the literature showing the advantage of dialogue-videos even when observers watched them individually. However, having the observing students watch collaboratively as dyads provided data to carry out in-depth analyses of their conversations and activities in order to understand why dialogue-videos are superior to monologue-videos. Toward that goal, transcripts of video dialogues and monologues, as well as peer-to-peer conversations of the observing students collected in a prior study, were analyzed using the ICAP (interactive, constructive, active, passive) framework as a lens. Three sets of analyses were carried out. The 1st set focused on the content of the videos in terms of the tutors' and the tutees' moves. The 2nd set focused on the activities and behaviors of the collaboratively observing dyads. The 3rd set focused on the role of the tutees in the dialogue-videos in eliciting constructive and interactive engagement from the observing students. Our analyses suggest that dialogue-videos naturally elicited more constructive and interactive engagement behaviors from the observers than the monologue-videos, which in turn mediated the observers' own learning. [More] Descriptors: Learning Processes, Outcomes of Education, Teaching Methods, Dialogs (Language)

Esnard, Talia; Cobb-Roberts, Deirdre; Agosto, Vonzell; Karanxha, Zorka; Beck, Makini; Wu, Ke; Unterreiner, Ann (2015). Productive Tensions in a Cross-Cultural Peer Mentoring Women's Network: A Social Capital Perspective, Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning. A growing body of researchers documents the unique barriers women face in their academic career progression and the significance of mentoring networks for advancement of their academic trajectories as faculty. However, few researchers explore the embedded tensions and conflicts in the social processes and relations of mentoring networks, and the implications this has for social capital. Using this as our starting point, our narrative reflections suggest that while productive orientations and shared experiences as women faculty of color promote supportive professional roles; the structural, relational, and cultural dynamics subtly frame the basis of our tensions. In moving beyond these, we advance the need for structured and constructive engagement of our differences in building the social capital of peer mentoring networks. While this is not an easy task, we hold that it requires fluid and ongoing negotiations of these relationships if collective goals are to be realized. [More] Descriptors: Social Capital, Peer Relationship, Mentors, Role

Francis, Becky; Mills, Martin; Lupton, Ruth (2017). Towards Social Justice in Education: Contradictions and Dilemmas, Journal of Education Policy. The article builds on prior arguments that research on issues of social justice in education has often lacked constructive engagement with education policy-making, and that this can be partly attributed to a lack of clarity about what a socially just education system might look like. Extending this analysis, this article argues that this lack of clarity is perpetuated by a series of contradictions and dilemmas underpinning "progressive" debate in education, which have not been adequately confronted. At the heart are dilemmas about what constitutes a socially just negotiation of the binarised hierarchy of knowledge that characterises education in the UK, Australia and elsewhere. Three exemplar cases presented from contemporary education curriculum policy in England and Australia are used to illustrate these dilemmas. We then extend this argument to a series of other philosophical dilemmas which haunt education and create tensions or contradictions for those concerned with social justice. It is maintained that we need to confront these dilemmas in efforts to extend conceptual clarity in what it is we are seeking to achieve, which in turn can better equip us to provide the empirical and conceptual information necessary to effectively engage policy-making to remediate inequalities in education. [More] Descriptors: Social Justice, Educational Policy, Curriculum, Foreign Countries

Divan, Aysha; Knight, Elizabeth; Bennett, Dawn; Bell, Kenton (2019). Marketing Graduate Employability: Understanding the Tensions between Institutional Practice and External Messaging, Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management. Do the narratives of employability constructed by higher education institutions for marketing purposes differ from the conceptualisation and/or the realisation of employability within those institutions? The study reported here drew on interviews with 16 senior academic and student support staff who were tasked with developing student employability at one of nine institutions in Australia, Canada and the UK. We employed Holmes' conceptions of employability as possessional, positional or processual to analyse how the interviewees conceptualised employability and the presentation of employability on the institutional websites. We found that most institutions' employability marketing narratives were inconsistent with the institutional practice reported by staff. We explain this tension in the context of two competing characterisations of higher education: a university-student transaction view; and a learning view. We emphasise the need for internal and external narratives to align and advocate the need for engagement in a constructive and critical dialogue involving all stakeholders. [More] Descriptors: Marketing, College Graduates, Employment Potential, Higher Education

Ojala, Maria (2015). Hope in the Face of Climate Change: Associations with Environmental Engagement and Student Perceptions of Teachers' Emotion Communication Style and Future Orientation, Journal of Environmental Education. Is hope concerning climate change related to environmental engagement, or is it rather associated with unrealistic optimism and inactivity? This study on Swedish high school students identified two kinds of hope: constructive hope and hope based on denial. Constructive hope was positively associated with engagement and a perception that teachers respect students' negative emotions concerning societal issues and have a future-oriented, positive, and solution-oriented communication style. Students who felt hope based on denial instead were less inclined to behave pro-environmentally and perceived their teachers as not taking their emotions seriously and as communicating in a pessimistic way. Boys perceived their teachers as less accepting of negative emotions, which explained why they felt more hope based on denial than girls. Practical implications of these findings are discussed. [More] Descriptors: Climate, High School Students, Student Attitudes, Psychological Patterns

Cherry, Nita L. (2014). New Stories of Mastery: Constructive Learning in the Face of Complex Dilemmas of Practice, Studies in Continuing Education. This paper suggests that complex practice dilemmas call for thick stories of masterful practice that don't ignore the tensions and ambiguities involved. The paper draws on an Australian study of policing as a fruitful example. Academic commentary suggests policing is beset with practice dilemmas unique in their complexity. However, empirical studies suggest that stories of mastery dominating police culture are heroic, simplistic accounts from which the doubts and tensions of dilemma have been removed. The study reported here explored interviews with 50 serving police officers for indicators of whether they describe their work in similarly limited ways. In total, 351 separate dilemma statements were identified and a further 252 statements offered glimpses of how officers deal with dilemmas. These statements offer multiple clues as to what more comprehensive stories of complex practice mastery might look like. It is suggested that workplace learning and continuing education should actively encourage the construction of such stories. Similarly, for other domains of practice, it is suggested that stories of masterful practice describe, in plain language, constructive engagement with the wicked and unresolvable, in order to be helpful in an age of super-complexity in which liquid learning presents both challenges and opportunities. [More] Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Police, Problem Based Learning, Problem Solving

Hodges, Linda C. (2018). Contemporary Issues in Group Learning in Undergraduate Science Classrooms: A Perspective from Student Engagement, CBE – Life Sciences Education. As the use of collaborative-learning methods such as group work in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics classes has grown, so has the research into factors impacting effectiveness, the kinds of learning engendered, and demographic differences in student response. Generalizing across the range of this research is complicated by the diversity of group-learning approaches used. In this overview, I discuss theories of how group-work formats support or hinder learning based on the ICAP (interactive, constructive, active, passive) framework of student engagement. I then use this model to analyze current issues in group learning, such as the nature of student discourse during group work, the role of group learning in making our classrooms inclusive, and how classroom spaces factor into group learning. I identify key gaps for further research and propose implications from this research for teaching practice. This analysis helps identify essential, effective, and efficient features of group learning, thus providing faculty with constructive guidelines to support their work and affirm their efforts. [More] Descriptors: Undergraduate Students, Student Attitudes, Science Instruction, Group Activities

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