Academic engagement in self-regulated, cooperative foreign language l...

The academic engagement of learners is not a clear-cut, rigid construct. Instead, it depends on a multitude of factors that can relate to the individuals involved in the learning processes, their relationships with each other, the applied teaching methodology, and fluctuating contextual influences. The overlapping, interacting components that shape engagement in foreign language learning can be cognitive, metacognitive, affective, social, task-related, communicative, and foreign language-related (Amerstorfer and Münster-Kistner 2021). These components feature with varying magnitude in the relationships learners maintain with others, which creates opportunities for teachers to enhance the academic engagement of their students and increase their enthusiasm for learning (Mercer and Dörnyei 2020). In this paper, I present an inspirational example of three passionate teachers – firm believers in self-regulated cooperative learning – who advocate a combination of meaningful, enjoyable learning experiences and caring, supportive teacher guidance. 

     After defining the concept of academic engagement and its essential components, I explore how the individual components of learner engagement intertwine and what other potential influences there are. The second part of the paper focuses on teacher actions to benefit learner engagement and draws on practical experiences with coaching and learner self-study in the context of cooperative learning. The presented empirical information, which is part of a larger-scale study (Amerstorfer, in preparation), was collected in semi-structured interviews with teachers who apply a modern adaptation of the Dalton pedagogy (Parkhurst 1922) and integrate other engagement-enhancing measures in their teaching. Rather than instructors, they view themselves as coaches whose job it is to support their students according to individual abilities, needs, and contextual circumstances.