Student Engagement: Enhancing Students’ Appreciation for Learning and Their Achievement in High Schools

Abstract

Students’ perspectives and ideas related to classroom learning seem to be mostly ignored in high schools. Not only does this issue result in both teachers and students struggling in the process of teaching and learning, but students also fail to appreciate the intrinsic value of the curriculum content. It is therefore important to explore the significance of student engagement on their appreciation of learning as well as any positive effects that it might have on their success. This paper has two main aims. First, it provides an overview of the consequence of student engagement and why attending to students’ points of view and their engagement in the process of learning might improve their content learning and achievement. Second, it provides a sketch of the attempts made toward the use of technology and social media to motivate and engage students in content learning. Consequently, the paper has three main sections. The first gives succinct descriptions of student engagement in high school. The second part alongside with my own teaching experiences traces the ways that students are helped to develop an appreciation for learning and highlights the importance of the impact of student engagement in learning. The third section interweaves students’ interest and engagement with digital media and an appreciation of content learning. In so doing, the paper suggests that social media could be an aid for students to learn the content in the subjects being studied, which connects their in-school context and experience to out of school.