Optimal Learning Environments to Promote Student Engagement analyzes the psychological, social, and academic phenomena comprising engagement, framing it as critical to learning and development. Drawing on positive psychology, flow studies, and theories of motivation, the book conceptualizes engagement as a learning experience, explaining how it occurs (or not) and how schools can adapt to maximize it among adolescents. Examples of empirically supported environments promoting engagement are provided, representing alternative high schools, Montessori schools, and extracurricular programs. The book identifies key innovations including community-school partnerships, technology-supported learning, and the potential for engaging learning opportunities during an expanded school day. Among the topics covered: Engagement as a primary framework for understanding educational and motivational outcomes. Measuring the malleability, complexity, multidimensionality, and sources of engagement. The relationship between engagement and achievement. Supporting and challenging: the instructor's role in promoting engagement. Engagement within and beyond core academic subjects. Technological innovations on the engagement horizon. Optimal Learning Environments to Promote Student Engagement is an essential resource for researchers, professionals, and graduate students in child and school psychology; social work; educational psychology; positive psychology; family studies; and teaching/teacher education.

"Good Mentoring" offers an in-depth analysis of the way mentors transmit not only knowledge and skills but the guiding values that support good work and social responsibility. The book clearly shows how these values are passed along to those they guide. Profiling three lineages of scientists passing their professional skills, values, and practices down through generations, the book reveals what constitutes successful mentoring in science and beyond. Stemming from a first-of-its-kind study by the GoodWork Project, the book shows how the cultivation of professional ethics and excellence depends on teachers and mentors and the learning environments they foster.

Optimal Learning Environments to Promote Student Engagement analyzes the psychological, social, and academic phenomena comprising engagement, framing it as critical to learning and development. Drawing on positive psychology, flow studies, and theories of motivation, the book conceptualizes engagement as a learning experience, explaining how it occurs (or not) and how schools can adapt to maximize it among adolescents. Examples of empirically supported environments promoting engagement are provided, representing alternative high schools, Montessori schools, and extracurricular programs. The book identifies key innovations including community-school partnerships, technology-supported learning, and the potential for engaging learning opportunities during an expanded school day. Among the topics covered: Engagement as a primary framework for understanding educational and motivational outcomes. Measuring the malleability, complexity, multidimensionality, and sources of engagement. The relationship between engagement and achievement. Supporting and challenging: the instructor's role in promoting engagement. Engagement within and beyond core academic subjects. Technological innovations on the engagement horizon. Optimal Learning Environments to Promote Student Engagement is an essential resource for researchers, professionals, and graduate students in child and school psychology; social work; educational psychology; positive psychology; family studies; and teaching/teacher education.

This study investigates the experience of student engagement in high school classrooms - both the influences on engagement as well as the short-term and long-term educational outcomes resulting from engagement. The experiences of 526 tenth and twelfth grade students enrolled in 13 U.S. high schools during the 1990s were examined. Data were gathered using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) and student interviews. Students reported higher engagement during individual and group work than while listening to the teacher lecture, watching a video, or taking a test - and also during their non-academic classes such as art, computer science and vocational education compared to their traditional academic classes. Engagement also predicted long-term continuing motivation and college performance. Over all, results suggested that activities and classrooms that combined academic intensity with features that provoke a positive emotional response are more likely to engage students the short term and the long term.