The Great Entertainer or Nanny McPhee - striving after student engagement in the HE classroom
This reflection takes a bottom up approach and stems from my personal experience. It takes a vertical perspective in the sense it is trying to tentatively probe into reasons behind phenomena. It is not meant to be a critique of existing approaches towards student engagement but rather an attempt to look into a possible reason for a changing student profile and some educators' response to that phenomenon. A year ago I volunteered to participate in a peer observation initiative in my institution and attended a colleague's foundation year class. These are students fresh from high school and need more support to adapt to the UK HE academic culture and learning and teaching style. My colleague's approach was very much EFL one involving many CELTA-type activities. This worked well for the profile of students and kept them engaged and participating in the activities throughout. None of them was browsing on their mobile device as usually happens in such classes. In my post-obs ref...