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I too have been troubled by what people define as student
engagement - even from the PER community. After teaching for 20+
years, I have come to the conclusion that in many ways what a
teacher asks students to do - whether it is listen to a lecture or
do an active-engagement exercise/experiment or a create their own
lab and analyze it - they will learn nothing if their mind and
heart are not engaged.
As long as you have students who do whatever a teacher asks them to
do for no other reason than to get a grade then you will not have
any learning occur at all. Oh yes, they may make the grade. But
most of them will forget most of what they have been taught in
less than a year.
They key to learning anything is to want to learn it. Nobody can
make you learn it if you don't want to learn! And nobody can stop
you from learning if you want to learn!
I believe that if administrators, teachers, students and parents
would accept this reality, we would see a tremendous improvement
in student performance as measured by the understanding and
retention of knowledge and the development of skill.
Mark Mars