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Table of Contents
CHAPTER: LITERATURE REVIEW1
Overview of Research on Engagement1
Competence and Perceived Ability2
Teacher Support4
Sense of Community and students` Participation6
Quality of Instruction, Challenging Tasks, and Higher-Order Thinking Activities8
Peer Connections9
Classroom Structure and Environment10
Perceived Control11
Prior Levels of Student Engagement and Academic Performance11
SimCalc: Accelerating Students` Engagement with the Mathematics of Change12
Democratizing Access to Knowledge13
Lines of Innovation15
Students` Conceptual Resources16
Reconstructing Subject Matter18
Technological Mediation of Mathematics and Science Learning19
The Design of Mathworlds21
Why Piecewise Linear Functions24
Student Learning with Mathworlds27
REFERENCES29
Chapter: Literature Review
This chapter presents a review of prior literature on student engagement. While some of the literature deals directly with mathematics, the majority of the literature on student engagement deals with engagement as a general phenomenon. The review is divided into two sub-sections 1) research review in the context of students` engagements for mathematical perspective 2) review students` engagement using mathematical activity like SimCalc.
Overview of Research on Engagement
Skinner et al. (1990) found that students successfully engaged in school earn better grades, score higher on standardized tests of achievement, and are more personally adjusted. Interest on student engagement has flourished in recent years due to its impact on both learning and student achievement (Newmann, 1992; Steinberg et al., 1996). However, very little literature exists on student engagement in the high school mathematics classroom. In a systematic review of 44 articles that span 22 years, Fredricks et al. (2004) found only four articles that dealt with engagement in a mathematics classroom, and only one of the four dealt with engagement in a secondary mathematics classroom. Jimerson et al. (2003) characterized engagement as “a multifaceted construct that includes affective, behavioral, and cognitive dimensions” (p. 11). They argued that student engagement occurs in a student's academic performance, classroom behavior, extracurricular involvement, interpersonal relationships, and school community.
Their definition encompasses the whole child, including emotional, behavioral, and cognitive processes, and the many diverse contexts that affect and are in turn affected by engagement in the mathematics classroom. This investigation on student engagement in the mathematics classroom was based on the definition proposed by Jimerson et al. Therefore, a search was made to identify significant theories that relate to students' emotional, behavioral, and cognitive abilities. However, a dearth of information exists within that body of literature for research pertaining to the combination of behavioral, emotional, and cognitive factors that make up student engagement.
Research spans multiple grades levels and content areas and includes theoretical articles. Most of the prior research is based on the engagement of students in elementary schools or on students that are considered at-risk. Multiple factors affect student engagement. Nine of these factors that affect ...