Engagement

How can children be engaged in the classroom? And what effect does this have on their learning? When we visited classrooms in Kenya, Ghana, Colombia and Jordan to initially develop the Engage tool, we noticed that teachers – even with the same training, materials, and lesson plans – varied a great deal in how they engaged the children they were teaching. In some classrooms, children were absorbed by the activities – interacting with classmates, thinking critically, and deciding for themselves how to go about a task.

Anyone who has watched a child truly absorbed in what they are doing knows what a powerful driver for learning it can be. When a child is engaged, they go deeper in their learning, are self-motivated, and persist at tasks for longer. However, until now, no measurement tools have been available to assess how children are engaged in their learning in classrooms and homes.