But why didn’t they ask the students? Understanding more fully what engages today’s higher education students

Abstract

Despite an extensive body of research, the student engagement (SE) concept eludes an agreed definition, with the absence of the student voice in the literature contributing to the lack of conceptual clarity. No one understands SE better than students themselves, their expertise resting on them simply being students. Drawing on those often-excluded voices, this research analysed the open-ended comments in the national Irish Survey of Student Engagement (ISSE), for each of the years 2013–2019. A critical realist mixed methods approach allowed multiple and dissonant voices to be heard, different levels of reality to be established and causality explained. Exploiting this rich secondary qualitative data addressed the notion of a reductive engagement with a singular voice, and facilitated the development of a student-led model of SE. Systematic analysis of the comments unmuted diverse student voices capturing the how and why of SE in Irish higher education (HE) nationally, and the context specific policies and practices that help to explain the survey’s quantitative indicators. For students in Irish HE, how we teach matters as much as what we teach, the process of SE taking precedence over the product or outcome-based emphasis inherent in engagement surveys. Students consider engagement to be a relational process that impacts on their emotional, cognitive and behavioural states and is best understood in the context of the teacher student relationship (TSR) in the classroom. Relational pedagogies facilitate student-faculty interaction inside and outside the classroom, providing the seedbed for the development of the TSR. Accessing support and resources online is essential for students, especially those for whom caring or work responsibilities prevent regular campus attendance. However, students’ capacity to interact either face to face or online depends on lecturer approaches and attitudes, which can support or limit student agency. This, despite the emphasis on student behaviours in the ISSE which, it is argued, places the responsibility for engagement largely on students themselves. Methodologically, Leximancer, a latent semantic analysis software, enabled a cost-effective, efficient and credible means of analysing these rich student comments. Correlating the results of the automated analysis with the researcher’s qualitative interpretation confirmed and enhanced the credibility of the findings.