Teacher ratings of student engagement with educational software: An exploratory study

The quality of students' learning engagement may significantly influence their learning. Can teachers accurately judge student learning engagement with educational software? In this exploratory study, 3 fifth-grade teachers used a seven-level taxonomy to rate the frequency of different forms of engagement among 42 students interacting with different types of educational software. Teachers spontaneously treated the seven levels of engagement as a continuum, rating students highest on one level or a set of contiguous levels. Teachers generally agreed when ranking students by their typical levels of engagement, but disagreed regarding the actual frequencies of different engagement types. Ratings of software engagement conceived of as interpretive activity were correlated significantly with student reading test scores. Given the authentic classroom conditions in which this study took place, the results are promising for the classroom utility of the seven-level conception of student engagement with software.