Objectives of the session. This session presents findings from several studies in multiple countries that are investigating dimensions of engagement and motivation in adolescents using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) and innovative smartphone technology. Representing diverse research contexts, including different learning environments and multi-disciplinary perspectives, these studies provide a rich opportunity to evaluate what contributes to student engagement, motivation, and learning. The goals of this session are to (1) to present conceptualizations of engagement; (2) test measures of engagement across different contexts; and (3) measure the relationship between engagement with several outcomes of interest such as future aspirations, learning, and achievement.

Overview of the presentation. Each paper in this session contributes to the conceptualization and measurement of engagement and motivation. There is no shortage of research that attempts to measure and test several aspects of engagement (see Christenson, Reschly & Wylie, 2012). However, with such an expansive field that is developing various constructs and measures, the ability to bound the definition of engagement and understand the relationship between engagement and useful outcomes is becoming increasingly difficult. The research presented here comes from several international studies in Finland, Germany, and US that use multiple instruments and measures to capture the experiences of adolescents and young adults while learning, including their attitudes, beliefs, engagement and motivation—with a particular focus on STEM— which together can provide new insights into the persistent problems of low engagement and motivation in secondary schools around the world.

The first paper presents findings from an international collaboration between the US and Finland and highlights several similarities and differences between learning experiences for secondary students in science classes. In the second study, similar methods are applied to a sample of university students in Germany and examines their intrinsic, attainment, and utility values and costs during their university lectures. The final paper is a methodological study of the participation rates in ESM studies.

Scholarly or scientific significance. These related studies of engagement and motivation contribute to uncovering relationships between learning and the context in which learning occurs. This research offers new insights that focus on both situation-specific engagement measures, which support the argument that engagement is about a specific pattern rather than just an average of its components, as well as cross-situational (stable) measures of engagement and motivation. By leveraging multiple research studies and sources of data, these studies can help to contextualize the learning experience across various situations/contexts and examine relevant student, teacher, and school background information. This blend of perspectives also will provide both a person-oriented approach to analyze patterns of engagement and motivation as well as a variable-oriented approach, which highlights how different measures contribute to our understanding of learning.

Structure of the session. This proposed 90-minute session will start with a brief introduction of presenting authors and some short remarks on the field of engagement and motivation research by the chair. Then, each of the three research studies will have 15-20 minutes to present on their individual work. To conclude we will allow 20-30 minutes for the discussant comments and questions.

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