I agree. This issue has been plaguing me for some time now with regard to
young children. Rheta and I have been working for a couple of years with a
first and second grade teacher who is wonderful. Every time we observe in her
classroom, we are struck by the high degree of active engagement we see in the
children. We want to study it--how she manages to set up the classroom to
promote it, how she assists individual children in maintaining it, what sorts
of activities encourage or retard it, etc, etc, etc. However, we keep coming
back to a central problem. How do we define and measure it? Interest seems to
be a part of it, but it isn't the whole thing. Does anyone have any leads we
could pursue? We came across something called the Leuven Involvement Scale for
Young Children (out of the Centre for Experimental Education in Belgium) but
it didn't quite capture what we were looking for. The Leuven Scale was focused
on individual children, and didn't allow for rating situations that were
socially interactive. Yet often active engagement is highly social.
I realize that we seldom talk about young children on XMCA, but this issue has
had me stumped for some time, and I would welcome anyone's suggestions,
half-baked or otherwise.
Betty Zan
Regents' Center for Early Developmental Education
University of Northern Iowa
e-mail Betty.zan who-is-at uni.edu