Student Engagement: Effective Academic, Behavioral, Cognitive, and Affective Interventions at School

This book provides cutting-edge, evidence-based strategies and interventions that target students’ engagement at school and with learning. Coverage begins with the background and 29-year history of the Check & Connect Model and describes the model and assessment of student engagement that served as the backdrop for conceptualizing the engagement interventions described in the book. Subsequent chapters are organized around the subtypes of student engagement – academic, behavioral, affective, cognitive – that were developed based on work with the Check & Connect Model. Principles and formal interventions are presented at both the universal and more intensive levels, consistent with the Response-to-Intervention/Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) framework. The book concludes with a summary on the lessons learned from Check & Connect and the importance of a system that is oriented toward enhancing engagement and school completion for all students.

Interventions featured in this book include: 

• Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS).
• The Homework, Organization, and Planning Skills (HOPS) Intervention.
• The Good Behavior Game in the classroom.
• Check-in, Check-out (CICO). 
• Banking Time, a dyadic intervention to improve teacher-student relationships
• The Self-Regulation Empowerment Program (SREP).

Student Engagement is a must-have resource for researchers, professionals, and graduate students in child and school psychology, educational policy and politics, and family studies.

Amy L. Reschly

Amy Reschly is a professor of Educational Psychology and coordinator of the doctoral School Psychology Program at the University of Georgia. Her scholarly work focuses on student engagement, dropout prevention, and working with families to promote student success. She was co-editor of the Handbook of Research on Student Engagement and the Handbook of Student Engagement Interventions and is currently the Editor of School Psychology Review.

Angie J. Pohl

Angie Pohl, PhD, is a middle school principal in Minnesota. Through her various roles in education from teacher, school psychologist, and researcher to school leader, she has remained committed to student engagement and ensuring all students are ready academically, socially, and emotionally for the next level of education. Prior to leading in schools, she provided training nationally and internationally on Check & Connect and served as an investigator on several Check & Connect research projects.

Sandra L. Christenson

Dr. Christenson is Professor Emeritus, Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Minnesota. She has been a principal investigator on several federally-funded projects in the areas of dropout prevention and family-school partnerships, including Check & Connect, which is in its 29th year of research and implementation. Dr. Christenson publishes extensively; recently she co-edited the Handbook of Research on Student Engagement and the Handbook of Student Engagement Interventions.