Student Engagement in Higher Education

Theoretical Perspectives and Practical Approaches for Diverse Populations

Stephen John Quaye, Shaun R. Harper, Sumun L. Pendakur, Stephen John Quaye, Shaun R. Harper, Sumun L. Pendakur

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429683459
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Hochschulausbildung

In the updated edition of this important volume, the editors and chapter contributors explore how diverse populations of students experience college differently and encounter group-specific barriers to success. Informed by relevant theories, each chapter focuses on engaging a different student population, including low-income students, Students of Color, international students, students with disabilities, religious minority students, student-athletes, part-time students, adult learners, military-connected students, graduate students, and others. New in this third edition is the inclusion of chapters on Indigenous students, student activists, transracial Asian American adoptee students, justice-involved students, student-parents, first-generation students, and undocumented students.The forward-thinking, practical, anti-deficit-oriented strategies offered throughout the book are based on research and the collected professional wisdom of experienced educators and scholars at a range of postsecondary institutions. Current and future faculty members, higher education administrators, and student affairs educators will undoubtedly find this book complete with fresh ideas to reverse troubling engagement trends among various college student populations.

Chapter 1
The Heart of Our Work

Equitable Engagement for Students in US Higher Education

Sumun L. Pendakur, Stephen John Quaye, and Shaun R. Harper

In the fraught summer of 2019, we brought this third edition to life under difficult circumstances—rising inequality, emboldened White supremacy, a climate crisis, and so much more, all under the ominous eye of an oppressive political administration. These circumstances, however, provide a clarion call for all in staff, faculty, and administrator roles in higher education to do better by students, particularly those who experience the range of exclusion and harm embedded in their collegiate environments. This is the practitioner’s locus of control, the sphere of influence, and practitioners must act. Colleges and universities are diversifying at the fastest rate in history, reflective of broader demographic changes. The student activism that emerged in 2015 around identity and campus sexual violence is a powerful reminder that students still face oppression on their campuses and beyond. In addition, the student protests were powerful reminders that the original demands of the 1970 Black Action Movement at the University of Michigan are, as yet, largely unmet. And yet, many campuses operate via traditional forms of student engagement, with narrow visions of the dynamic and intersectional needs, assets, and opportunities presented by today’s and tomorrow’s students. None of these statements is intended to induce hopelessness. On the contrary, our writing here speaks to an opportunity: a chance to learn more, transform one’s knowledge and skills, equitably alter institutions of higher education from the inside out, and meaningfully impact the experiences and futures of all the students educators serve.

We posit that developing a nuanced, specific understanding of community-based needs and assets is essential for the 21st-century student affairs educator or faculty member. Simply having broad-stroke knowledge about minoritized communities is not enough. Specificity is essential for faculty and student affairs educators’ ability to be strategic and intentional about fostering conditions that compel students to make the most of college, both inside and outside the classroom. In their 1991 book, Involving Colleges: Successful Approaches to Fostering Student Learning and Development Outside the Classroom, Kuh and colleagues concluded:

Involving Colleges are committed to pluralism in all its forms, and they support the establishment and coexistence of subcommunities that permit students to identify with and receive support from people like themselves, so they can feel comfortable in becoming involved in the larger campus community.

(p. 369)

This declaration and subsequent related perspectives guided the conceptualization and writing of the first and second editions of this book. Although we differentiate involvement from engagement later in this chapter, transforming today’s campuses into Involving Colleges for all students is very much the vision with which this work was undertaken. This third edition draws from that wellspring and also broadens the boundaries of student engagement considerations through an intersectional and anti-deficit lens. Intersectional, in that each author in this edition has attempted to articulate the social, economic, and political ways in which identity-based systems of oppression connect, overlap, and influence each other (Crenshaw, 1989). Anti-deficit, in that while the authors present the very real and complex challenges populations of students face, this does not mean they are operating from deficits. The question the authors answer is “Where are the challenges placed?” In this book, authors ask readers to take an equity-minded approach to systems, institutional mechanisms, and educator gaps in knowledge as the problem, not the students (Bensimon, 2007). By looking at the problem systemically, educators can better engage and honor students because they are addressing the root of the problem, not the symptoms.

In this third edition, we amplify the specific challenges faced by diverse populations on college campuses and offer guidance for accepting institutional responsibility for the engagement of students. We trust that readers will be moved to respond with deliberation through conversations, collaborative planning, programs, services, curricular enhancements, and assessment. A cursory scan of the table of contents will confirm that this book is not exclusively about “minority students.” Rather, authors focus on a range of populations for whom the published research confirms that engagement, sense of belonging and affirmation, and connectivity to the college experience are in various ways problematic. Emphasis is also placed on enhancing outcomes and development among different populations. New for this volume is the inclusion of chapters on student activists, formerly incarcerated/justice-involved students, parenting students, undocumented students, first-generation college students, transracial Asian American adoptees, and Native and Indigenous students.

The practical implications presented at the end of each chapter are in response to issues noted in the literature, informed by relevant theories, and based on the collective professional wisdom of those who have written. The authors bring to this book decades of full-time work experience in various capacities (faculty, student affairs educators, academic affairs administrators) at a wide range of two-year and four-year institutions of higher education. Indeed, they are experts in the field who have taken an intricate look at the various populations represented in this book and have devoted a large part of their careers to understanding the needs of these students. Notwithstanding, we neither claim to furnish all the answers nor contend that this book contains prescriptive solutions for all engagement problems facing every student population. Instead, experienced educators and scholars have collaborated to produce a resource for the field of higher education and the student affairs profession that will hopefully ignite dialogue, agency, and strategic thinking and action on behalf of undergraduates who should be at the heart of the work.

The remainder of this chapter sets the stage for the population-specific chapters that follow. We begin by making clear what we mean by “student engagement” and synthesizing what decades of empirical research contend about the associated gains, educational benefits, and outcomes. Next, we discuss the importance of shifting the onus for engagement from students to educators and administrators, as we advocate strategy, intentionality, and reflective action. We then justify the role of theory in this book and in engagement practice. The chapter concludes with an urgent note for campuses to better align espoused values of equity and inclusion with concrete institutional actions.

Understanding the Landscape and Significance of Engagement

Student engagement is simply characterized as participation in educationally effective practices, both inside and outside the classroom, which leads to a range of measurable outcomes. We borrow this operational definition from Kuh, Kinzie, Buckley, Bridges, and Hayek (2007), who also note:

Student engagement represents two critical features. The first is the amount of time and effort students put into their studies and other educationally purposeful activities… . The second component of student engagement is how the institution deploys its resources and organizes the curriculum, other learning opportunities, and support services to induce students to participate in activities that lead to the experiences and desired outcomes such as persistence, satisfaction, learning, and graduation.

(p. 44)

We are persuaded by a large volume of empirical evidence that confirms strategizing ways to increase the engagement of various student populations, especially those for whom engagement is known to be problematic, is a worthwhile endeavor. However, the gains and outcomes are too robust to leave to chance, and social justice will not ensue if some students come to enjoy the beneficial byproducts of engagement, but others do not.

Engagement and Student Outcomes

“The impact of college is largely determined by individual effort and involvement in the academic, interpersonal, and extracurricular offerings on a campus” (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005, p. 602). However, as the authors of this book elucidate in myriad ways, countless cultural and contextual obstacles exist on the path of students being able to fully engage with all the campus offerings. That disparity is especially sharp, given that researchers have found that educationally purposeful engagement leads to the production of gains, benefits, and outcomes in numerous domains. These include: cognitive and intellectual skill development (Anaya, 1996; Baxter Magolda, 1992); college adjustment (Cabrera, Nora, Terenzini, Pascarella, & Hagedorn, 1999; Kuh, Palmer, & Kish, 2003); moral and ethical development (Evans, 1987; Rest, 1993); practical competence and skills transferability (Kuh, 1993, 1995); the accrual of social capital (Harper, 2008); and psychosocial development, productive racial and gender identity formation, and positive images of self (Patton, Renn, Guido, & Quaye, 2016; Harper & Quaye, 2007; Okello, 2018; Torres, Howard-Hamilton, & Cooper, 2003). In addition, Tross, Harper, Osher, and Kneidinger (2000) found that students who devote more time to academic preparation activities outside of class earn higher grade-point averages. While all these benefits are important, the nexus between engagement and persistence has garnered the most attention.

Engagement and Persistence

As noted in the first edition of this book (and elsewhere), differences in first- to second- year persistence, as well as in four-year and six-year graduation rates, continually disadvantage many Students of Color, undergraduate men, lower-income students, first-generation college-goers, undergraduates who commute to their campuses, and a handful of other student populations. While the reasons for student persistence through degree attainment are multifaceted and not easily attributed to a narrow set of explanatory factors (Braxton, Hirschy, & McClendon, 2004), we know one point for certain: Those who are actively engaged in educationally purposeful activities, both inside and outside the classroom, are more likely to persist through graduation. This assertion has been empirically proven and consistently documented by numerous higher education researchers (e.g., Astin, 1975, 1993; Bean, 1990, 2005; Berger & Milem, 1999; Braxton, Milem, & Sullivan, 2000; Bridges, Cambridge, Kuh, & Leegwater, 2005; Milem & Berger, 1997; Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005; Peltier, Laden, & Matranga, 1999; Stage & Hossler, 2000; Tinto, 1993, 2000, 2005). Museus (2014) expands on this body of research by describing the site of student engagement through the Culturally Engaging Campus Environments Model, which focuses on cultural relevance and cultural responsiveness.

Tinto, the most frequently cited scholar on college student retention, contends that engagement (or “academic and social integration,” as he called it) is positively related to persistence. In fact, his research shows that engagement is the single most significant predictor of persistence (Tinto, 2000). He notes that many students discontinue their undergraduate education because they feel disconnected from peers, professors, and administrators at the institution. “Leavers of this type express a sense of not having made any significant contacts or not feeling membership in the institution” (Tinto, 2000, p. 7). In his 1993 book, Leaving College: The Causes and Cures of Student Attrition, Tinto argues that high levels of integration into academic and social communities on campus lead to higher levels of institutional commitment, which in turn compel a student to persist (Tinto, 1993).

Similarly, Bean (1990, 2005) proposes that students leave when they are marginally committed to their institutions. Institutional commitment is strengthened when undergraduates are actively engaged in educationally purposeful endeavors that connect them to the campus and in which they feel some sense of enduring obligation and responsibility (Bean, 2005; Swail, Redd, & Perna, 2003; Tinto, 1993). Those who hold leadership positions in student organizations, for example, assume responsibilities in their groups and know that others depend on them for service, guidance, and follow-through on important initiatives. Thus, they feel committed to their respective organizations and the institution at large and are less likely than students who are not engaged to leave. The same could be applied to a student who feels like an important contributor to learning and discussions in their classes. While the relationships between engagement, student outcomes, and retention are powerful, it is important to acknowledge the conditions under which these are likely to occur.

Distinguishing Educationally Purposeful Engagement

Over 30 years ago, Astin defined student involvement as “the amount of physical and psychological energy that the student devotes to the academic experience” (1984, p. 297). Astin’s conceptualization of involvement refers to behaviors and what students actually do, instead of what they think, how they feel, and the meanings they make of their experiences. His theory of student involvement is principally concerned with how college students spend their time and how various institutional actors, processes, and opportunities facilitate development. “The extent to which students can achieve particular developmental goals is a direct function of the time and effort they devote to activities designed to produce these gains” (p. 301). This theory is among the most frequently cited in the higher education literature.

While conceptually similar, there is a key qualitative difference between involvement and engagement: it is entirely possible to be involved in something without being engaged. For example, a student who is present and on time for every weekly meeting of an organization but sits passively in the back of the room, never offers an opinion or volunteers for committees, interacts infrequently with the group’s advisor or fellow members outside weekly meetings, and would not dare consider running for an office could still legitimately claim that she is involved in the group. However, few would argue this student is actively engaged, as outcomes accrual is likely to be limited. The same could be said for the student who is involved in a study group for his psychology class but contributes little and asks few questions when the group meets for study sessions. Action, purpose, and cross-institutional collaboration are requisites for engagement and deep learning (Kinzie & Kuh, 2004; Kuh, Kinzie, Schuh, Whitt, & Associates, 2005; Kuh et al., 2007).

The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), an instrument through which data have now been collected from approximately four million undergraduates at more than 1,500 different four-year colleges and universities since 2000, is constructed around ten engagement indicators and a set of high-impact educational practices:

• Academic Challenge—Including Higher-Order Learning, Reflective and Integrative Learning, Quantitative Reasoning, and Learning Strategies.
• Learning with Peers—Including Collaborative Learning and Discussions with Diverse Others.
• Experiences with Faculty—Including Student-Faculty Interaction and Effective Teaching Practices.
• Campus Environment—Including Quality of Interactions and Supportive Environment.
• High-Impact Practices—Special undergraduate opportunities such as Service Learning, Study Abr...