University Faculty Members' Perceptions of Student Engagement:
An Interview Study

Lana Berardi and Tom Gerschick

Project Description

• Goal: To understand university faculty members' perspectives regarding multiple facets of student engagement.
• Research Questions
  • How do university faculty members define student engagement?
  • What cues do they utilize to identify it?
  • What strategies and practices do they employ to facilitate it?
  • What barriers and supports do faculty members encounter when facilitating student engagement?
  • How do they address these barriers?
  • Does engagement vary by the social characteristics of students? If so, how?
• Lacunas in the Research Literature
  • Much of the research on student engagement has been conducted at the high school and elementary school levels; little exists on the university level.
  • Much of the existing research is from the perspectives of the students; faculty perspectives are relatively unexplored.
  • Little of the research investigates faculty perceptions of the linkage between social characteristics (such as race and ethnicity, class, and gender) and the degree of student engagement.
• Data Collection & Analysis Methods
  • In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 faculty members representing 12 departments in 6 colleges at ISU.
  • A Theoretical Sampling process was used to identify informants
  • 10 interviews have currently been analyzed using the Grounded Theory Method

Initial Thematic Findings

1. Faculty informants generally share an intuitive definition of student engagement.
2. Students' motivation for pursuing a college degree significantly shapes their degree of engagement
3. Faculty disagree whether social characteristics shape students' degree of engagement.
4. Faculty members encounter a wide variety of barriers to student engagement encompassing micro to macro levels.
5. Faculty use a variety of strategies and practices to facilitate student engagement.

Summary and Implications

1. There is still much we do not know about student engagement. Many research opportunities exist.
2. If faculty members are correct that student engagement is an evolutionary process, it behooves us to coordinate our efforts with instructors in K-12 to support each other's endeavors.
3. The largely shared intuitive definition of student engagement and the use of many of the same strategies suggest that faculty members are reflective practitioners and that they are exposed to knowledge about student engagement that is then filtering into their pedagogy.
4. Faculty responses to barriers to student engagement are largely individualistic and classroom based. More coordinated effort and structural change are needed to mitigate macro level barriers.
5. Finally, some faculty may incorrectly assess the relationship among race and ethnicity, social class, gender and student engagement. If so, this may have negative ramifications for the teaching-learning process. This possibility necessitates immediate attention.