Emerging Trends and Perspectives

Abstract

As the millennium turned, student engagement emerged as a new and compelling approach to assessing and improving the quality of undergraduate education. An important measure of its appeal is the rapidity with which it has been embraced in a range of national contexts through the implementation of the surveys documented in this volume. These implementations represent an international network of collaborating researchers who are simultaneously building knowledge, promoting educational improvement and focusing quality discourses away from crude measures and rankings in favour of critical matters of educational practice. Rather than slavishly adopting a fixed vision of student engagement, these adaptations respect the importance of national context. Although multinational inquiry into student engagement is in its infancy, a number of important lessons have already emerged that can guide educational improvement efforts at both institutional and governmental or ministerial levels.