Student Engagement

Academic engagement is an essential component of student success. In Topeka Public Schools, teachers regularly engage students in learning activities that challenge them to think critically and creatively, while working closely in a cooperative group. Through engagement activities students are able to work on both interpersonal and academic skills. Staff work to ensure students are not just compliant, but truly engaged in learning activities every day.

What is Student Engagement?

There are many ways to define the concept of engagement. When students are working in cooperative teams, and the principles of cooperative learning have not been compromised, we have achieved student engagement. Additionally, students can be engaged during independent experiences. Teachers must ensure engagement isn’t simple compliance, in other words, just completing a task to get it finished and turned in. Engagement can be broken down into three types: behavioral (on task), cognitive (deep learning), and emotional (connection and value). In TPS we work to engage students in all three ways.

Engagement Strategies

In TPS, we seek to include research-based strategies to engage and motivate all learners. Instructional strategies to ensure students engage in academic discussions and use higher order questioning skills are critical to ensure students are assessment capable learners. Strategies may include: Socratic Seminars, Project Based Learning, and Kagan Structures for Engagement.

Kagan Cooperative Learning

For over a decade, TPS had provided teachers training in Kagan Cooperative Learning structures (www.kaganonline.com). These structures are designed specifically to ensure all students engage with the content being learned, and with each other. The principles that define engagement in the Kagan philosophy include: Positive interdependence, individual accountability, equal participation, and simultaneous interaction

Topeka Public Schools is committed to educational fairness and opportunity for all racial and ethnic groups and academic excellence and personal success for all students. Central to this commitment is educational equity. Educational equity means raising the achievement of all students while (1) eradicating the achievement gaps between the lowest and highest performing students and (2) eliminating the racial predictability or disproportionality of which student groups occupy the highest and lowest achievement categories.