Student Cognitive Engagement

Cognitive

Cognitive engagement can be defined according to Fredricks, Blumenfeld, and Paris (2004) as, “draws on the idea of investment; it incorporates thoughtfulness and willingness to exert the effort necessary to comprehend complex ideas and master difficult skills.” Cognitive engagement plays an important role in learning because it requires students to build on skills that they already know and combine them with strategies and motivation in order to comprehend and learn material that may be new or challenging to them (Pintrich, Schrauben, 1992). Evidence of student cognitive engagement or disengagement starts as early as Primary Education. Cognitive factors that impact student engagement and motivation to finish their work include

Basic academic skills have straight forward objectives, right or wrong answers, and are used as building blocks to achieve higher difficulty tasks (Rupley, Blair, & Nicols, 2009). Examples of basic academic skills in a Primary grade level would be math facts, letter/sound recognition, and identifying high frequency words. These basic skills should be mastered and ingrained to the point which students can utilize them without particular effort or difficulty (Wright, 2011). Cognitive strategies are skills that students will use to maneuver more difficult academic tasks that may be above their comfortable skill level (Rosenshine, 1995). These strategies assist students in problem solving, completing work that is nonprocedural, and answering comprehension questions. Finally, academic-enabling skills are skills that assist the student in successful learning that can be applied to many different subject and activities. These skills include organization, time management, and appropriate goal setting (DiPerna,

According to Fredricks, Blumenfeld, and Paris (2004), emotional engagement can be defined as, “encompasses positive and negative reactions to teachers, classmates, academics, and school”. Factors involving emotional engagement and motivation while completing work include the student not seeing adequate pay off in the activity or task, low self efficacy, and the student being at risk for certain soci-emotional implications. If a student is effected by any or all of these emotional factors, it is highly likely that it will impact their willingness to complete assigned