Theorising student engagement in higher education

Theorising student engagement in higher

education

Peter E. Kahn*University of Liverpool, UK

Student engagement has become problematic following the rise of mass and universal forms of

higher education. Significant attention has been devoted to identifying factors that are associated

with higher levels of engagement, but it remains the case that the underlying reasons for student

engagement and, indeed, the notion itself of ‘student engagement’ remain weakly theorised. In

this article, we seek to develop the theoretical basis for student engagement in a way that high-

lights the student’s own contribution. We explore how learning involves students taking responsi-

bility for action in the face of uncertainty, whether in pursuit of personal or communal concerns.

Drawing on perspectives primarily from realist social theory, we suggest that student engagement

may be shaped by extended, restricted and fractured modes of reflexivity and co-reflexivity. In

this way student engagement in higher education is theorised as a form of distributed agency,

with the impact of a learning environment on this agency mediated by reflexivity. Reflexivity itself

is further influenced by the tasks and social relations encountered by students in a given learning

environment. The role that social relations play in students’ responses to learning specifically

offers a means to strengthen the moral basis for education. Our account provides an explanation

as to why specific educational practices, such as those termed ‘high impact’, might lead to higher

levels of student engagement within the wider context of a knowledge society. We thus offer

insights towards new forms of educational practice and relations that have the potential to engage

students more fully.

Introduction

Student engagement in higher education has increasingly become a matter for con-

cern in recent years. Trow (2006) points out that as a greater proportion of an age

cohort attends university, then attendance effectively becomes compulsory and stu-

dent engagement becomes problematic. In its most immediate sense, student engage-

ment refers to the contribution that students make towards their learning, as with

their time, commitment and resources (Krause & Coates, 2008). More broadly,

though, the review by Trowler (2010, p. 3) suggests that the literature sees student

engagement as pertaining to the ‘interaction between the time, effort and other rele-

vant resources invested by both students and their institutions intended to optimise

the student experience and enhance the learning outcomes and development of stu-

dents and the performance, and reputation of the institution’. Clear links have been

established between the engagement of students and variables such as student reten-

tion (Kuh et al., 2008) and academic performance (Pascarella et al., 2010). Higher

*Centre for Lifelong Learning, University of Liverpool, 128 Mount Pleasant, Liverpool, L69 3GW,

UK. Email: [email protected]

© 2013 British Educational Research Association

British Educational Research JournalVol. 40, No. 6, December 2014, pp. 1005–1018

DOI: 10.1002/berj.3121

education institutions evidently stand to gain a good deal from any capacity to foster

an engaged student body.

Research has also begun to identify specific educational practices that are particu-

larly effective in engaging students. Studies using data from the National Survey of

Student Engagement (NSSE) in the US, for instance, have been able to establish a

set of practices that have a high impact on student engagement (Kuh & Schneider,

2008). While such an approach may assist in selecting educational practices, though,

it leaves the underlying concept ‘student engagement’ relatively weakly theorised.

Kuh and Schneider (2008), for instance, identified ways in which the level of aca-

demic challenge, the presence of active and collaborative learning, student–facultyinteraction and a supportive campus environment contribute to student engagement,

but without seeking to theorise how these elements work together to effect gains of

various kinds. Such studies tend to emphasise the way in which student engagement

is linked to given institutional or student characteristics, but Carini et al. (2006, p.

23) emphasises that only a relatively modest proportion of the variation in learning

outcomes can be accounted for through measures of student engagement based on

survey instruments. Coates (2006, p. 57) has argued that this framework from Kuh

and Schneider (2008) is the most advanced existing conceptualisation of the phe-

nomenon, but it remains the case that it downplays the student’s own role in shaping

his or her own engagement. To what extent are students able to exercise intentional

causality in the way that they approach their studies? It is no surprise that Fredricks

et al. (2004) called for a richer view of how ‘students behave, feel, and think’ in

understanding the notion of engagement.

A number of researchers have begun to fill out engagement from the perspective of

the student. In considering how students approach their studies and the tasks

involved, Mann (2001) contrasts engagement with the notion of ‘alienation’. Mann

views alienation from a range of perspectives, including the student as outsider in

respect of their capacity to participate and as one who is unable to engage in the

unfolding discourse. Contributions within Harper and Quaye (2009) adopt a range of

theoretical lenses, including possible selves theory, transition theory, critical race the-

ory, attribution theory and others. This approach draws attention to the sweep of fac-

tors that might be relevant to student engagement in various settings, although the

primary emphasis on diverse populations of students draws one away from the agency

of the individual student. Elsewhere, Harper and Quaye (2009) emphasises that

engagement involves more than simply participating in some practice, but is accom-

panied by a range of feelings around those practices, and an attempt to make sense of

the activity.

Given both the relative lack of attention to theoretical explanation of student

engagement and the finding that significant variation in engagement occurs at the

level of the individual, it is worth considering the application of further theoretical

perspectives. In looking to develop a theoretical account of student engagement in

this paper, we turn initially to the realist social theory of Margaret Archer (2003,

2007), which highlights how reflexivity mediates the influence of structure on agency.

Archer sees reflexivity seen as ‘the regular exercise of mental ability, shared by all nor-

mal people, to consider themselves in relation to their (social) contexts and vice versa’

(2007, p. 4). She argues that reflexive deliberation involves a mental process in which

1006 P. E. Kahn


the object under consideration is bent back upon the subject doing the considering,

whether through planning, prioritising, imagining, rehearsing, monitoring or so on.

While much of her realist social theory has been developed in relation to social mobil-

ity, studies that draw on her work have begun to address educational matters (see

Clegg, 2005; Czerniewicz et al., 2009; Kahn et al., 2012; Williams, 2012).

In considering reflexivity, though, there is evident overlap with the literature on the

regulation of learning, including in this studies that relate to the role of motivation

and metacognition (Boekaerts et al., 2000). Mutch (2010), indeed, argues that there

is a need for studies that consider the overlap between the fields of psychology and

sociology in relation to the study of reflexivity. Haggis (2009) also highlights the need

for theories of student learning to draw on a more sophisticated approach to theoris-

ing the individual and society, taking into account recent developments in these two

fields. We thus incorporate into our argument reference to the literature on the regu-

lation of learning, while also drawing on further sociological studies and on wider

studies into student learning. In this way we are able to demonstrate the explanatory

power of our theoretical account. Our object in this paper is to offer an overview as

to how Archer’s work can be extended to student engagement, considering how such

engagement manifests itself as the exercise of agency in given environments for

learning.

Charting a course through the unknown

A programme of education typically requires students to engage with specific sets of

tasks and activities. Where higher education is concerned, there are choices to be

made about how much time is devoted to one’s studies, and about such consider-

ations as where and how one studies. There is significant scope for variation in how,

or whether, a student carries forward their learning. For Archer (2003), intentional

courses of action are given concrete shape in the pursuit of specific projects. It is help-

ful here to characterise a closely-related set of activities conducted by a student as part

of his or her programme of education as a project, or learning project. In itself this

conception of a learning project operates at a relatively general level. Ashwin (2009)

uses a similar conception to ground a range of different accounts of the way that

structure and agency interact with each other in educational settings. Archer’s

account, though, emphasises the role that reflexivity plays in shaping the projects that

one chooses to undertake and the way that they are distinctively progressed. She sug-

gests it is through the exercise of varied modes of reflexive deliberation that individu-

als prioritise their concerns and embark upon specific courses of action within given

social settings.

At the most basic of levels, the literature on the regulation of learning has estab-

lished that learning does need to be regulated. This is the case not only for the cogni-

tion entailed in learning, but also for the behaviours and motivation expressed by

students, as Pintrich (2000) argues. Specific strategies, for instance, that have been

shown to enhance a student’s own motivation include self-consequating, interest

enhancement and self-talk in pursuit of goals (Wolters & Rosenthal, 2000). Regula-

tion may also be seen to involve various phases, for instance taking in mental activity

that is focused on forethought, activation, monitoring, control and reaction (Pintrich,

Student engagement in higher education 1007


2000). Studies on metacognition similarly emphasises the role that the learner plays

in monitoring and controlling their own cognitive activity (Flavell, 1979). While Mar-

tin and McLellan (2007) highlight the proliferation of terms around self-regulation,

significant overlap is present with the relatively open notion of reflexive deliberation.

Furthermore, it is clear that learning inherently involves one in progressing projects

in unfamiliar contexts. Jarvis (2012) suggests that uncertainty plays a role in impelling

learning quite generally. Perkins (2006) characterises some parts of knowledge as par-

ticularly troublesome, in providing experiences of alienation for students. Such fac-

tors as the novelty of the context, the presence of incongruities or the range of

possible ways forward are all related to the challenges entailed in learning. Even

beyond this sense of a novice grappling with what is unfamiliar, though, Barnett

(2004) argues that uncertainty increasingly characterises life even for the expert. On-

going gains in knowledge suggest that the world is radically unknowable, and this

results in challenges both for novice and expert. Stehr contends that where a society is

predicated on the creation and use of knowledge, then ‘ever greater scope to critically

deconstruct and reassemble knowledge claims’ (2001, p. 139). Barnett argues that

students need to come to terms with anxiety, and that human flourishing involves ‘liv-

ing effectively amid uncertainty’ (2004, p. 257). Archer (2003) specifically highlights

the role that changes of context and uncertainty play in generating the need for reflex-

ive deliberation. The way that a student is confronted with uncertainty thus repre-

sents a key feature of a learning environment, a term that we use here to refer to the

context within which learning occurs, taking in the programme of education to be fol-

lowed and interactions with others.

This account of learning, though, initially places the regulation of a learning pro-

ject within the purview of the individual student. But a longstanding body of

research also points to the social basis of knowledge and its acquisition (Jarvis,

2012). Recent research has emphasised the need to consider social goals within the

regulation of learning. Volet et al. (2009) suggest: ‘There is, however, a growing

conceptual agreement in the literature from both sociocultural and socio-cognitive

perspectives that both self and social forms of regulation are needed to understand

regulation in actual learning activities’. This suggests that we need to widen the

frame of our discussion beyond the agency of the individual learner, to include the

way that groups of learners and tutors pool their agency together. Archer herself

uses the notion of corporate agency (2003, p. 133) to refer to the way that a group

of individuals articulate their aims and develop organisation to realise these aims.

In our setting, corporate agency can be said to involve the pursuit of learning com-

munal projects, as Luckett and Luckett (2009) saw in relation to first generation

learners in higher education. Dialogue within the group is required in order to

articulate, prioritise and act upon shared concerns. Donati (2011, p. xvi) argues,

furthermore, that social relations ‘reflect the performance of an emergent reality

between two or more people, groups and even institutions when they act as social

subjects’. He suggests that a relation orients the reflexivity of the subjects involved,

as they take into account ways that the relation influences their situation. The

deliberation within the group bends back upon the group’s own activity, with Do-

nati (2011, p. 17) referring to it as ‘we-reflexivity’; although we would prefer the

term ‘co-reflexive’.

1008 P. E. Kahn


It is helpful to draw attention specifically to the way in which the individual and

mutual aims in view orient the reflexivity of those involved. For Th�evenot (2001), theterm ‘engagement’ adverts to the connection between an intervention on the part of

an agent in pursuit of some good and the response that the agent meets from reality.

He identifies regimes of familiarity that involve the pursuit of goods centred on per-

sonal and local convenience, and regimes of justification for which the goods at stake

centre on collective conventions. Th�evenot (2001, p. 6) argues further:

This has led to the strange situation in which most sociologists, while deeply concerned

with political and moral issues (sometimes overtly, sometimes not), generally offer

accounts of the social world which poorly acknowledge actors’ preoccupation with the

good.

There is scope, equally, for students to pursue varied sets of goods in an educational

context. These include those cultural goods that are implicated in developing under-

standing or capacity, as well as those goods that pertain to relations with others.

Indeed, substantial relations with peers, tutors and others may provide an essential

means of support to deal with the challenges inherent in pursuit of cultural goods.

Characterising variation in the student response

Archer (2003) suggests that the prioritisation of different sets of concerns alongside

experiences of social continuity or discontinuity can lead one to adopt a distinctive

mode of reflexivity. More specifically, Archer argues that some individuals character-

istically engage in deliberations that remain private to themselves, as a means to prior-

itise performance in relation to one’s employment. She terms this autonomous

reflexivity, highlighting how it is associated with socio-economic mobility. Mean-

while, meta-reflexivity involves prioritising social ideals in the face of social disconti-

nuity, with the associated need to monitor of one’s own reflexive deliberations.

Communicative reflexivity is characterised by an individual sharing their internal

deliberations with others before progressing any action; it relies on the availability of

stable and intimate conversational partners. Finally, fractured reflexivity occurs

where internal deliberation results in personal distress rather than constructive action.

While one mode of deliberation may be seen to predominate for any given individual,

in principle any individual will able to operate across all of these respective modes.

Archer argues that such distinctive modes of reflexivity influence the way in which

agency is exercised. How might distinctive modes of reflexivity specifically mediate

the exercise of agency in educational settings? In exploring this territory in the

remainder of this paper, we see scope for a rich account of differences in the ways that

students engage in their learning.

Taking responsibility: extended reflexivity

When given responsibility to progress a learning project in the face of uncertainty,

one immediate response will be for a student to deliberate upon cognitive processes

and behaviours that could be employed in order to progress the project. For example,

the project may involve the exercise of various non-reflexive cognitive processes or



behaviours. These may already have been mastered by the student or could be mas-

tered as separate sub-tasks. Pintrich and Zusho (2002) argue that higher levels of

interest and value ensure that students are more likely to employ strategies for self-

regulation. Wolters and Rosenthal (2000), furthermore, contend that a greater use of

self-regulatory strategies in learning is linked to higher levels of self-efficacy and

towards a mastery orientation. Mastery goals are indicated as those in which a stu-

dent’s intention is to develop his or her competence, understanding or learning. Such

goals directly address the challenge of taking responsibility in the face of uncertainty.

By contrast, with performance goals the intention is either to outperform others (per-

formance-approach goals) or to avoid being seen as incompetent in relation to others

(performance-avoidance) (Pintrich, 2000). Both of these performance-oriented

stances tend to down-play aspects of the uncertainty that would otherwise be entailed

in learning, and thus the need for reflexivity. Extended deliberation is associated with

a readiness to progress a learning project on its own terms.

The communal dimension to learning plays a particular role in extending scope for

deliberation. J€arvel€a et al. (2010) argue that a range of social goals are evident in the

literature, including those that relate to approval from others, interaction, social

responsibility and status; with co-reflexivity implicated in the pursuit of these goals.

J€arvel€a et al. (2008) observed that the conduct of the task and the regulation of the

group’s motivation was consciously constructed and controlled by the individuals

involved. Volet et al. (2009) highlight the relevance of reciprocal, bidirectional and

mutual forms of regulation. Regulation here is characterised by the respective

strength of sharing and reciprocity between those involved, based around the pursuit

of a genuinely shared goal for the joint activity in question. Social or group roles in

principle offer an additional means to extend deliberation, in so far as they offer an

individual a locus for developing commitments or in ensuring that co-reflexivity actu-

ally occurs. Where a set of social relations includes parties bearing significantly differ-

ent perspectives, then the contextual incongruity entailed may further serve to

stimulate reflexivity. Indeed, it may be harder simply to dismiss another perspective

when it is presented in person. Such social relations are particularly conducive to

meta-reflexivity, in which incongruity is faced on its own terms. We can see why

Donati argues that a social relation is grist to the mill of reflexivity’ and that ‘relational

differentiation is both an outcomes of reflexive processes and the generators of new

reflexive processes’ (2011, pp. 52, 204).

Some learning projects, though, particularly encourage students to engage in

reflexive deliberations on an extended basis. It is clear that high impact practices

make it hard for students to avoid taking responsibility for their learning in the face of

uncertainty, as with study abroad or engaging in research; and also that substantive

social relations are often incorporated as an integral element of a high impact practice.

Activities tied to authentic contexts promote more extended patterns of self-regula-

tion, as Vermetten et al. (2002, p. 273) argues. Or learning may introduce conflicts in

relation to one’s concerns that are not amenable for a straightforward resolution. Za-

slavsky (2005), for instance, considers ways to introduce forms of incongruity such as

competing claims, unknown path or questionable conclusion, and non-readily verifi-

able outcomes. Students can also specifically be required to engage in deliberative

activity, as when providing a commentary on the strategies one employed in order to

1010 P. E. Kahn


solve a problem or when engaging in personal and academic development planning.

The review by Kahn et al. (2008) highlights a range of strategies that have been

employed to extend reflexive processes in relation to various forms of professional

practice, including the role of the role of the facilitator in provoking discussion, the

use of prompt questions, portfolios, mentoring and the inclusion of additional parties

to a communal learning project. The unique demands of a learning task thus influ-

ence the reflexivity conducted alongside it, similarly to the way that Donati (2011)

sees social relations framing the reflexivity of the subjects to that relation.

Finally, deliberation may be extended least in part on the basis of any dominant

mode of reflexivity adopted by the student, although this seems particularly to be rele-

vant for communicative reflexivity and meta-reflexivity. There may be ways in which

students who favour communicative reflexivity are more included to extend a joint

process of deliberation to take into account wider social concerns. This may affect

their response to learning environments that have prioritised co-reflexivity, as with

the way that someone responds to undertaking a group role. Some students may be

more inclined than others to give time to considering the implications of any incon-

gruities that are present with respect to a learning task, especially those who have

already begun to exercise meta-reflexivity. Each incongruity, as with each new con-

text, may present someone with a new set of issues to address, with the potential to

trigger further cycles of deliberation. Barnett (2004, p. 249) argues that many of the

challenges and uncertainties of the present world can never be directly resolved, in

that attempts to address them result in ‘a multiplication of incompatible differences

of interpretation’. One would expect to see widespread exercise of meta-reflexivity in

a fully-developed knowledge society.

Evading learning: restricted reflexivity

A learner may choose, though, to prioritise concerns and commitments that lie

beyond the required learning projects, as we have already seen with performance-ori-

ented stances towards learning. If a student wishes to complete a given educational

programme some form of learner activity will usually be required, but strategies may

be possible that minimise the need for deliberation; as with formulaic or habitual

responses. There are thus ways in which both reflexivity and co-reflexivity in relation

to learning will be restricted, although there is no reason to assume here that students

are not able or ready to engage in more extended forms of deliberation in other set-

tings. Vermetten et al. (2002) found evidence to characterise a set of learners as inac-

tive, given their tendency to exhibit lows levels of self-directed learning strategies.

Fewer regulatory strategies are also likely to be required where a task is perceived to

be straightforward, with Nicholls et al. (1989) characterising ‘feeling successful when

a task is easy’ as work avoidance.

Habits may be seen as behaviours that require little or no conscious thought, with

cues in a familiar context triggering an automatic response (Lally et al., 2010). Habit-

ual responses in principle may apply to learning, as with a student who always

responds to a learning task by memorising accompanying information. But even

where memorisation is used in a staple fashion, a more full-bodied habitual response

need not be in evidence. Biggs (1998), for instance, argues that repetitive learning



strategies form a part of the cultural backdrop in Confucian heritage cultures, and

that this does not prevent learners from approaching their studies with an intention to

make wider sense of the specific content in hand. Habitual responses are, though,

more likely to come to the fore where a practical skill is entailed, as Archer (2012, p.

57) argues, rather than apply evenly to learning across the board.

Marton and S€aalj€o (1976, p. 124) further suggest that learning can become ‘techni-

fied’ when task demands become predictable. They note that learning under these

circumstances runs the risk of being reduced to a search for knowledge expected on

the test. Vermetten et al. (2002, p. 278) found that the ‘surface learners’ in their study

acted upon instructional directions more frequently than both the deep learners and

inactive learners, displaying difficulty with self-regulation. Indeed, it is quite possible

also for a tutor to close down deliberation on the part of a student or a group of stu-

dents, through indicating a single way forward. This can apply even in cases where in

principle a task is open-ended, as in cases where a supervisor directs the lines of

enquiry that are to be followed during a student research project. Fellow students can

similarly direct each other to carry out a particular course of action.

Scope for reflexivity is restricted when one applies a routinised or pre-determined

approach to undertaking a learning project. We see here a formulaic engagement with

a learning project, as the task demands are simplified. As such this represents a form

of evasive action in relation to learning. Archer (2012, p. 34) suggests that autono-

mous reflexivity flourishes in contexts which entail relative predictability, given the

way that such reflexivity involves an instrumental rationality in which one calculates

the relative advantages and disadvantages of different courses of action. She specifi-

cally saw evasive engagement amongst students for whom communicative and auton-

omous reflexivity was seen to predominate, with academic study primarily seen as a

mean to gain credentials or as an opening onto a highly-paid career (2012, pp. 222–223).

Clearly, though, it will not always be easy to apply a habitual or formulaic response

in a novel context. For instance, it may not be obvious what to memorise in relation

to a substantively open-ended task. If a learning environment requires one to take

projects forward with imagination in the face of uncertainty, then formulaic

approaches to pursuing a project are likely to be of limited value. We can see why

Archer further argues that practices grounded in habit provide a relatively weak basis

from which to exercise agency in the uncertain settings that are typical of the modern

world (2012, p. 62). While it may be helpful to focus on the way in which dispositions

affect agency in varied contexts, as through the tendency to display a dominant mode

of reflexivity, Archer argues forcefully that dispositions do not lead individuals to

adopt to courses of action in a pre-reflexive manner. While learning in past societies

may have benefited from students adopting formulaic or habitual approaches to mas-

tering clear-cut forms of understanding, this is increasingly less effective in a knowl-

edge society. The emergence of societies based on knowledge has significant

implications for learning. In his account of the learning that is required for an

unknown future Barnett (2004, p. 258) prioritises dispositions above understanding.

In order to flourish in a radically unknowable world, the exercise of reflexivity

becomes an essential underpinning capacity. If scope for forms of action rooted in

habit is scaling down across society at large, then it will be harder to sustain forms of

1012 P. E. Kahn


education that are grounded in such a mode. The conditions for student engagement

are thus established in part at the level of an entire society.

Alienation as an alternative: fractured reflexivity

The need to assume responsibility for progressing a task in the face of uncertainty

may provide a particular challenge for some students. Boekaerts and Martens (2006)

argue that it is difficult to tell how students will respond to ill-structured and authen-

tic tasks for which they are given autonomy. A student may become overwhelmed by

the uncertainty associated with the progress of their learning project, whether because

of the complexity of the capacity to be mastered or as a result of the pedagogic pro-

cess. It is clearly possible that some students will respond with fractured reflexivity,

failing to find a constructive way forward at all. Archer argues that reflexive delibera-

tion provides those for whom fractured reflexivity predominates with little or no guid-

ance about how to progress a project (2003, p. 299). The personal distress associated

with fractured reflexivity provides one immediate route to student drop out and fail-

ure. The student’s perception is particularly important here, whether or not the learn-

ing task would actually prove intractable or not on further attempts, as both

(Vermetten et al., 2002) and Entwistle (1991) similarly argue. Scovel (1978) earlier

drew a distinction between forms of anxiety that are facilitating or debilitating. Facili-

tating anxiety motivates the learner to ‘fight’ the new learning task; it gears the learner

emotionally for approach behaviour. Debilitating anxiety, in contrast, motivates the

learner to ‘flee’ from the learning project; leading the student to adopt avoidance

behaviour. Incongruities or challenges can be perceived as intractable, with the stu-

dent unable to frame appropriate sub-tasks that might progress their project.

There is, furthermore, scope for students to respond differentially to the demands

placed on them by learning as it occurs in an essentially communal settings. The tran-

sition to university represents for many students a first departure from their natal

context, and this is especially so for students entering higher education from non-tra-

ditional backgrounds as Jary (2008) argues. Mann (2001) highlights how students as

outsiders can feel unable to give expression to their own desires, unsure as to what

contribution they themselves can make. Archer (2003, p. 311) identifies the ‘depriva-

tion of dialogical partners whose experiences were anchored in the same continuous

context’ as one trigger for fractured reflexivity. Communal learning projects can also

open up scope for further uncertainty, as to how others will respond or how one

might be able to progress a project that is beyond one’s immediate control. Individu-

als may be used to concluding their deliberations on their own, without allowing any

space for contributions from others, but co-reflexivity constitutes an essential element

of the organisation needed to effect corporate agency. It should not be surprising that

group work is made more challenging in the absence of pre-existing relations between

the members. Pauli et al. (2008) highlights the frustrations that stem from an absence

of commitment to the group and divisions within groups. A group project, for

instance, will require students to coordinate a set of actions in order to produce a

common output. In this case exclusion from the deliberative process within the group

or awareness of animosity from others has particular scope to trigger a fractured

response.



Conclusions

We have suggested that taking responsibility for a learning project in the face of

uncertainty allows for a range of deliberative responses from students. There is scope

for a student to adopt extended reflexivity as they seek to progress a learning project

on its own terms. Alternatively, students may respond with restricted reflexivity,

whether based around formulaic or habitual stances towards their learning, or with a

fractured form of reflexivity that does not offer support in progressing intentional

courses of action. Our account suggests that a distributed form of agency may be in

operation, whereby individual and communal dimensions are intertwined with each

other in relation to the projects pursued by students. It is possible to see a learning

environment as an arena for the exercise of both reflexivity and co-reflexivity. Scope

is thus present for a range of engaged or alienated responses on the part of the stu-

dent, although we have argued also that learning in a knowledge society favours

modes of reflexivity that enable one to deal with uncertainty on its own terms, as

through the exercise of meta-reflexivity and through forms of reflexivity that are

grounded in mutual concerns.

The forms of reflexivity outlined in this paper complement those identified by

Archer (2003), highlighting the role played by social relations in learning and how

deliberation is affected by the extent to which learning is prioritised in relation to

other projects. In this reading, a learning environment is defined in the first

instance by the learning projects and social relations that are entailed, framing as

these do the (nonetheless varied) responses of students. A learning environment

that encourages students to take responsibility in the face of uncertainty and that

integrates supportive social relations offers scope for reflexivity that promotes learn-

ing, especially in societies that are based around the production and use of knowl-

edge. There are consequences here for the identity of the learner, as Archer would

suggest that a shift in one’s configuration of concerns and commitments essentially

represents a shift in identity (2000, p. 241). Scope for transformation on the part

of the learner is an inherent possibility for learning. Indeed, the extent to which

one prioritises deliberation within learning constitutes an important element of this

identity.

It will be important to consider how different learning environments play out in

relation to the characteristics that we have identified. In this way we see scope to

explain why certain practices are more effective than others in engaging students, as

with those practices that have been termed ‘high impact’. Such insight may then assist

in developing further practices that have a positive impact on student engagement. Or

take the territory emerging in relation to Open Educational Resources and Massive

Open Online Courses (Kop, 2011; Raven, 2003). There is a clear need to identify

appropriate tasks and to help students deal with the uncertainty in the absence of a

tutor. In what ways do such courses and resources frame learning projects for stu-

dents? In our account learning emerges as inherently challenging for the student,

something teachers can forget from their vantage point as experts. Meyer and Land

(2006, p. 199) highlight the difficulties that those who have already mastered a body

of troublesome knowledge face when trying to understand the vantage points of stu-

dents in relation to that knowledge.

1014 P. E. Kahn


In this it will be important to employ a broad conception of the goods that students

are able to pursue in relation to their studies, and that provide a basis for their engage-

ment. There is particular scope here to pay greater attention to the relational goods

that underpin education. There will be ways in which social relations can be inserted

more directly into the pursuit of learning projects, as with peer–peer, professional–cli-ent, employer–employee, expert–novice, volunteer–recipient and other relations.

Intensive forms of education offer good scope for social relations, whereby proximity

to others is enhanced through residential arrangements, cohesiveness of student

cohorts or through use of technology. The basis on which different elements of the

student experience are organised is likely to have an impact on student engagement,

as in cases where accommodation or administration is ordered to maximise the deliv-

ery of an efficient (individualised) customer service or to establish social relations.

Employment that is un-related to studies may similarly restrict the scope to develop

social relations that are relevant to the learning environment. Our argument offers a

clear perspective on why student engagement might be enhanced by interactions

across a wider setting, as Baron and Corbin (2012) suggest. It is interesting that Do-

nati (2012) proposes a wider integration of social relations into society as a counter-

balance to the dominance of market and state. If students are to engage in their stud-

ies, then we need to find additional ways to strengthen a more widespread presence of

social relations in higher education. It may furthermore be the case that students

become less willing to tolerate uncertainty as an integral aspect of their learning when

their studies are predicated on substantive financial contributions. We see here ways

in which the market and the state may effectively combine together to attenuate

student engagement.

Education needs to be grounded in ways that reach beyond technical reasoning.

The quality of the social relations involved could become as much a focus for plan-

ning and organisation as any attempt to specific in advance the intended outcomes

for student learning. Donati suggests that social relations may be configured with

either human or non-human qualities, in which the human is ‘that which is distinctive

of the human being’ (2011, p. 20). Human qualities are evident where the subjects

are reciprocally oriented to one another in a relation, while non-human qualities are

present when the sense given to an action is merely functional. He identifies the

potential for a distancing of what is human from what is social, and we, in turn, can

say that there is similar scope to distance what is human from what is educational.

Our conception of the human person has significant scope to affect education. We

can say that a student’s relation with a learning project, and with peers or tutors asso-

ciated with that project, becomes less ‘human’ when conducted on a formulaic basis,

in the absence of social relations or when it becomes a focus for debilitating anxiety.

Elliott (2000) argues that any discussion of educational goods must be accompanied

by a concern for the moral and intellectual dispositions needed on the part of those

involved for the pursuit of those goods. The exercise of virtue plays a direct role in

education where social relations come to the fore, given that virtue helps to sustain

those relations as MacIntyre (1981) contends.

Our account primarily constitutes a theoretical argument, but we have nonethe-

less been able to integrate perspectives from a wide range of studies. Further

research will be required in order to explore the extent to which the perspectives



outlined in this paper pertain in varied contexts. We would, though, suggest that an

emphasis on the (co-)reflexivity of students is likely to be important if we are cha-

racterise the variety that takes places in the student experience of learning, and to

offer learning projects and social relations that take this into account. The way that

a student responds to uncertainty, responsibility and relations with others emerges

as relevant to learning in a knowledge society. Students themselves should take cen-

tre stage as we look to develop comprehensive understandings of their engagement

in learning.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to many colleagues for discussions related to this paper, including those

engaged in earlier and on-going studies on related topics.

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Theorising student engagement in higher education