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FAKE ENGAGEMENT
Ali H. Al-Hoorie
Plenary at TUELC2021, Taif University, Saudi Arabia
2-Jun-21
OUTLINE
•What is engagement
•Engagement vs. motivation
•What is fake engagement
•Empirical results
•How to promote authentic engagement
WHAT IS ENGAGEMENT
•Motivation: intention to learn (inward)
•Engagement: the actual learning action (outward)
•Motivation is a prerequisite to engagement, which is in turn a prerequisite to learning
•Motivation => engagement => learning
•Thus: no engagement, no learning
•No matter how high your motivation is
TYPES OF ENGAGEMENT
•Behavioral engagement
•Participation
•Asking questions
•Taking notes
•Not playing with phone
•Not chatting with peers (about irrelevant things)
•This may be the first thing that comes to teacher’s mind
•Cognitive engagement (less obvious to the teacher)
•Thinking, paying attention, not daydreaming
•Emotional engagement (less obvious also)
•enjoyment, enthusiasm vs. anxiety, boredom, frustration, anger
FAKE ENGAGEMENT
•Behavioral engagement without cognitive and emotional engagement
•Related terms:
•Strategic compliance: doing what is expected or required
•Ritual compliance: doing the minimum required to avoid negative consequences
•Retreatism: causing no problems as long as not forced to comply
•Rebellion: refusing to comply and actively diverting attention elsewhere (Schlechty, 2011).
•Studenting: behaving in a way that does not lead to real learning (e.g., figuring out how to
get high grades, what will be in the exam, how to ‘beat the system’) (Liljedahl, 2019)
•Haven’t received much attention
FAKE ENGAGEMENT
•Students “appear” to be engaged
•Intentionally manipulating their behaviors to feign engagement to deceive the teacher
•Fake engagement: behaviors that are made, consciously or unconsciously, by learners to achieve
an outside appearance of being attentive and on-task; however, in reality, their internal states,
are not congruent and, for diverse motives, they may be complying or just merely pretending
compliance (Mercer et al., 2021).
•Authentic engagement: congruence between the internal and external states and expressions of
engagement.
•leads to genuine, deep and meaningful learning
•involves multiple dimensions and not just behavior
EMPIRICAL RESULTS ON FAKE ENGAGEMENT
•Mercer et al. (2021) conducted interviews with university English language learners in Austria
•Focus group interviews
•Individual interviews
•Questions:
•What does fake engagement look like?
•When do students fake their engagement?
•Why bother to fake engagement?
EMPIRICAL RESULTS ON FAKE ENGAGEMENT
•What does fake engagement look like?
•1) Bodily display behaviors (eye movements, gesture, posture)
•“Just want to make the teacher feel that what she says is important. Make her feel that I am listening. I also
nod and give her eye contact, make her feel I am listening.”
•“So, I just took… the very concentrated thinking and writing [pose]”
•2) Task-related actions (note-taking, reading)
•“Like writing notes, uh, I just did like this morning. I was studying for my exam which I have very soon…
So, taking notes, taking fake notes on something else.”
•“When Iam using my laptop, the teacher can’t really tell what I am doing. When you open your laptop, it’s
like a wall between you and the teacher. Most of the time, they stand in front. They don’t really know what
you are doing. If you don’t type anything, I think they might know that you are not doing anything.”
EMPIRICAL RESULTS ON FAKE ENGAGEMENT
•When do students fake their engagement?
•1) Physical conditions
•“those times where you are kind of like so tired, and you almost fall asleep… but it also has a lot to with
having lunch before, something, or just really, really, sleepy.
•“I think the room is very important, the environment. Some classes are in the basement. It’s not good… the
lighting, the air.”
EMPIRICAL RESULTS ON FAKE ENGAGEMENT
•2) Teaching style (lecturing, seating arrangement)
•“the organization of the class, just in rows, sit like in school, and the university hall where the teacher just
stands in front, tells you one and a half hours about certain topics. This is very hard to concentrate.”
•“I think at the university how the tables form definitely makes a huge difference, because in some rooms
there is a U. It can sometimes have positive sides and negative sides. If you’re sitting on this side… facing
other students, it happens easily that you look at them doing. It’s really hard. The rows often schools use is
calming, is not engaging, but again everybody facing the front, something like lectures, it’s easy to focus. It
depends on the setting…”
EMPIRICAL RESULTS ON FAKE ENGAGEMENT
•3) Content
•“If you have to be there because it’s mandatory but you know there is nothing you can get out, and all the
colleagues to your right already do other stuff, at some point you will start to, just study, do homework or
whatever, but you’re not listening anymore. At least for me it’s like that.”
•4) Other attentional priorities
•“I had a very important exam the next day… but we were sitting in the seminar, in my head, I was revising
everything. I was thinking of something completely else, but I was still in the class. So definitely, because I
got very nervous about the exam, it’s a really important exam.”
•“when you have classes in the basement, you can see all the people walking by. That can be distracting.
And laptops can be distracting too, because you can always see what other students are doing on their
laptops. That’s not always course-related. When you sit next to them, you can see everything. That’s really a
distraction, because people often do other things on laptops all the time, all the time.”
EMPIRICAL RESULTS ON FAKE ENGAGEMENT
•Why brother to fake engagement?
•1) Social norms
•“I think it’s a kind of polite way… You make extra effort and you show respect to the teacher and other
students as well. Other students they come here to study. Although I don’t care, you can’t just disturb
others. I think it’s really impolite to sit in the class, look at your phone, and you talk to your neighbors.
Everyone is working, and you distract the students and your teacher.”
•2) To please the teacher
•“We’re trying enough to satisfy the teacher. We’re participating in the activities although we’re not
interested and we don’t enjoy, because the teacher gives us a lot of pressure that we have to participate.
Especially, in the class we really have to participate because we are quite small groups, she knows
everyone. She always tells us that she knows exactly when we’re not participating. It will influence our
grade in bad ways.”
CLASSROOM RESEARCH?
•What is the validity of classroom observation methodology?
•Quantifying student behaviors systematically
•Frequency of behaviors (e.g., hand raising, participating)
•Charts, rating scales, checklists, but sometimes also narrative descriptions
•Aims to give detailed & precise description of classroom behavior in naturalistic settings
•Learning is in the mind, not in the observable behavior
•Not to say that classroom observation is utterly useless
•But these limitations should be kept in mind
•How can you “observe” cognitive and emotional engagement in the class?
HOW TO PROMOTE AUTHENTIC ENGAGEMENT
•According to self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2017) three fundamental needs:
•Need for competence (feel able to do the task)
•Need for autonomy (feel they have some control on their learning)
•Need for relatedness (feel a sense of security and connection to others)
•Classroom context should be designed to satisfy these needs
HOW TO PROMOTE AUTHENTIC ENGAGEMENT
•Authentic projects
•Conditions emerging from this study:
•forming a group identity
•attaching personal value
•providing partial autonomy
•Out-of-class activities:
•Short (1 weekend) or long (1 semester)
•Collaborative
•Authentic
•working for a charity
•presenting before a real audience
HOW TO PROMOTE AUTHENTIC ENGAGEMENT
•Games
•Digital
•Simulated
•Communicative
TO CONCLUDE…
•“on-task behavior is not the same as engagement” (Mercer et al., 2021, p. 145)
REFERENCES
•Alharbi, M. A., & Al-Hoorie, A. H. (2020). Turnitin peer feedback: Controversial vs. non-controversial essays.
International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 17(17). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-020-00195-1
•Conrad R.-M., & Donaldson, J. A. (2011). Engaging the online learner: Activities and resources for creative instructions.
Wiley.
•Ibrahim, Z., & Al-Hoorie, A. H. (2019). Shared, sustained flow: Triggering motivation with collaborative projects. ELT
Journal, 73(1), 51–60. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccy025
•Liljedahl, P. (2019) A commentary: Accounting-of and accounting-for the engagement of teachers and teaching. In M.
Hannula, G. Leder, F. Morselli, M. Vollstedt, & Q. Zhang (Eds.). Affect and mathematics education (pp. 309–320). Springer.
•Mercer, Talbot, K. R., & Wang, I. K.-H. (2021). Fake or real engagement –Looks can be deceiving. In P. Hiver, A. H. Al-
Hoorie, & S. Mercer (Eds.), Student engagement in the language classroom (pp. 143–162). Multilingual Matters.
•Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2017). Self-determination theory: Basic psychological needs in motivation, development, and
wellness. Guilford Press.
•Schlechty, P. (2011)Engaging students: The next level of working on the work. Jossey-Bass.
THANK YOU!
www.ali-alhoorie.com
hoorie_ali@hotmail.com
@Ali_AlHoorie
