Learning is iterative. It takes time and effort. Real progress in any subject requires we engage, motivate, and support learners as they take next steps to improve their work. Brent Duckor and Carrie Holmberg show how teachers can use progress guides as a formative feedback tool to re-engage and support students where they are, while keeping the…

Project-based learning (PBL) is gaining momentum as a rich and multifaceted instructional approach that is motivating and engaging. Miranda S. Fitzgerald and Annemarie Sullivan Palincsar argue that PBL provides a particularly rich context for fostering students' literacy motivation and engagement. One reason for this is that characteristic…

Fifty years after the birth of hip-hop, Jonathan E. Collins considers how hip-hop can transform U.S. education. Many schools have barred hip-hop and disciplined students who use it. But these restrictions have been built on flimsy premises that ignore the beauty and complexity of the art form. Embracing and incorporating hip-hop can improve…

Students' valuing of academic content impacts their engagement in learning and plays a pivotal role in shaping their future academic and career choices. Fortunately, practicing educators can integrate many readily applicable strategies into teaching to enhance students' valuing of academic content. Drawing from expectancy-value theory, Eric M.…

Research on engagement in schools as well as research from the Challenge Success-Stanford Survey of School Experiences on how high school students' perceptions of classroom practices correlate with their engagement levels shows that more students are engaged in school when educators emphasize practices that promote learning and mastery. Authors…

Socio-scientific issues provide a great platform to both engage students in scientific topics and assess their understanding of scientific concepts. Nancy R. Singer, Amy Lannin, Maha Kareem, William Romine, and Katie Kline report on the STEM Literacy Project, a three-year National Science Foundation grant that aimed to improve STEM teachers'…

Student voice initiatives like surveys, student councils, and classes focused on leadership and agency all provide youth a way to share their opinions about school-based issues and take action to rectify them to some degree. But the way each initiative is leveraged, the experiences of the young people and educators involved, and the initiatives'…

Not enough attention is paid to the instructional design decisions that define students' experiences. Lisa Dover Kingsley and Jennifer Perry Cheatham contend that while quality teaching is crucial, the structural decisions supporting meaningful engagement often go unexamined. Using innovations in North Kansas City, Missouri, as a throughline, they…

For many students, project-based learning (PBL) can be more engaging than more traditional instructional approaches. Over the past 15 years, Anna Saavedra and Amie Rapaport studied seven inquiry-based approaches. Their research shows that PBL has a positive effect on students' achievement and development of important soft skills. Schools can…

Chronic absenteeism is a symptom of a lack of student engagement. Many students feel that schools are not welcoming places and that what they learn in the classroom is not applicable in the real world. Schools like Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center (the Met) in Rhode Island offer an alternative to educating high school students…

The pandemic responses of Guilford County Schools in Greensboro, North Carolina, offer insights on how navigating the COVID-19 crisis can inform district and school practices to curb student absenteeism and support student engagement in learning. Guilford used ESSER money to develop pandemic response programs that addressed wide-ranging and…