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.

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 Mittelschule (MS) with high migrant-background populations are lower compared to the national average, and much lower compared to their peers in general academic secondary schools. To understand how the achievement of all learners in MS could be sustained and improved, the project turned to the construct of engagement, known to be a key contributor to successful learning. It examined three dimensions of engagement: (a) engagement in the English language classroom, (b) engagement with school, and (c) engagement with the whole language repertoire within and beyond school. The project had four main aims. The first aim was to explore how learners' engagement in the English language classroom changed over the timescales of the task, lesson, and academic year, and which factors supported or hindered their engagement over these timescales. The second aim was to examine learners' engagement with school and academic life, and how this changed across one academic year. The third aim was to understand how learners with diverse language backgrounds engaged with their whole language repertoire, within and beyond school, throughout one academic year. Finally, the project sought to understand the interconnections between engagement in the English classroom, with school, and with the language repertoire, in order to create a comprehensive model of language learning engagement. The project comprised two phases. In Phase I, participants were recruited from three English language classrooms in three distinct MS schools in Austria: two located in an urban setting with a high migrant-background population, and one in a rural area with no migrant-background students. Data were collected across five lessons through (a) classroom observations, (b) video and audio recordings of each lesson, (c) real-time tracking of engagement, and (d) post-lesson interviews. Phase II was informed by the findings of Phase I and involved validating a questionnaire survey targeting learners' multilingual engagement and engagement in the English class. The insights gained from the project have contributed to significant scientific advances. The project's findings revealed that drawing on learners' full linguistic repertoires in the English classroom can support and validate their multilingual identities, strengthen their sense of multilingual pride and motivate them to acquire new languages and develop existing ones, including English. Furthermore, the findings shed light on the dynamic and socially mediated nature of engagement, showing that exposure to linguistic diversity within and beyond the classroom can play a critical role in shaping learners' engagement with languages and their beliefs about multilingualism.