A multi-level model of middle school student engagement

In recent years, Austria has faced several challenges in reducing the achievement gap between students from a migrant background and their non-migrant peers. Recent statistics have revealed that achievement rates of students in urban middle schools (MS) with a high migrant population were lower than the national average, and much lower than their peers in general academic secondary schools. To understand how achievement of all learners in MS can be sustained and improved, the proposed project turns to the construct of engagement, which is known to be a key contributor to successful learning. The project examines three distinct dimensions of engagement: (a) engagement in the English language classroom, (b) engagement with school, and (c) engagement with learners language repertoire within and beyond school. The project has five main aims. The first aim is to explore how MS learners engagement in the English language classroom changes during a task, a lesson, and an academic year. Secondly, it aims to understand the combination of factors supporting or hindering their engagement over these multiple timescales. The third aim of the project is to examine the engagement with school of MS learners, and how it changes across one academic year. The fourth aim of the project is to understand how MS learners from migrant and non-migrant backgrounds engage with their full language repertoire, within and beyond school, during the course of one academic year. Finally, the project investigates the interconnections between engagement in the English language classroom, with school generally, and with diverse languages across multiple timescales, in order to create a comprehensive, multi-level model of language learning engagement for MS students in Austria. The proposed project comprises two main phases. In Phase I, participants will be recruited from two English language classrooms in two distinct MS schools in Graz; one of which is based in an urban setting with a high migrant population, and one based in a suburban area with diverse percentages of migrant and non-migrant student populations. Data will be collected using the following tools: (a) classroom observations; (b) video and audio recordings of lessons; (c) real-time tracking of engagement; (d) post-lesson interviews. Phase II of the project will be informed by the findings of Phase I and will involve a large-scale questionnaire survey distributed among all urban and non-urban public MS schools within the city of Graz. The ultimate aim of the project is to better comprehend how to support and foster the academic achievement of students from all cultural, social, and linguistic backgrounds, while casting particular light on the engagement of migrant-background MS learners.