Student engagement survey launched

The New Zealand Council for Educational Research has launched a new survey tool aimed at helping schools understand how their students feel about school and learning.

It is called Me and My School and is for students in years seven to 10. It consists of 36 questions, backed by research and trialled on thousands of students around NZ. The survey is anonymous and the results are reported back to schools in a way that cannot identify individual students.

The Me and My School survey encompasses three important aspects of engagement – emotional, behavioural, and cognitive. The way these aspects are related and enmeshed means engagement can be viewed as a single characteristic and a measurement scale developed.

Questions include whether students feel safe at school, whether they respect their teachers, whether they pay attention in class and how they respond when schoolwork gets difficult.

NZCER assessment design and reporting manager, Charles Darr, says research shows that student engagement in learning is associated with a range of educational and health outcomes.

“Being interested and involved in learning, and feeling connected to school, is important. We know from the research that students who feel positive about school and who are caught up in their learning are more likely to be successful.”

Work on the survey began in 2006. In 2007 a representative national sample of over 6500 students enabled NZCER to develop national norms and construct the engagement scale.

Results from the 2007 norming trial show student engagement declining as students move from year seven to 10, with different gender patterns.

At year seven (age 11-12), girls were more engaged than boys. But their levels of engagement declined more sharply than for boys, so that at year 10 the national gender norms were indistinguishable from each other.

The survey will enable schools to see how their students are tracking compared to other schools, and to follow patterns of student engagement over time.

Mr Darr says Me and My School is designed to aid school policy-making and decision-making, and to help generate ideas for improvements to the school environment. He says schools involved in last year’s trial responded very positively to the survey and the information contained in the reporting.

Schools are able to purchase Me and My School from NZCER.