Educational Battlefields in America: The Tug-of-War over Students' Engagement with Instruction

Educational Battlefields in America: The Tug-of-War over Students' Engagement withInstructionAuthor(s): Gad YairSource: Sociology of Education, Vol. 73, No. 4 (Oct., 2000), pp. 247-269Published by: American Sociological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2673233 .

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Educational Battlefields in America: The Tug-of-War over

Students' Engagement with Instruction

Gad Yair Hebrew University of Jerusalem

This study shows that gaps between opportunities to learn and students' appro-

priation of those opportunities are instructionally produced and socially distrib-

uted via mechanisms that affect engagement and lead to alienation from instruc-

tion-the dissociation between students' physical presence in academic classes

and their thoughts while in class. Using an innovative approach to measuring

engagement and different types of alienation from instruction, the study found

that students are alienated from instruction almost half the time and that when

they are alienated, they tend to be preoccupied with external issues. Instructional

characteristics and external contexts exhibit a tug-of-war over students' engage-

ment and alienation from instruction. In relation to teacher-centered lectures,

progressive instructional strategies and methods are better able to insulate stu-

dents from alienating environments, whereas boring and nonrelevant instruction

allows external preoccupations to swamp students' attention, especially among

Hispanic and African American students and those who are at risk of alienation

from instruction.

If we take conjoint spontaneous involvement in a topic of conversation as a point of reference, we shall find that alienation from it is common indeed. Joint involvement appears to be a fragile thing, with standard points of weakness and decay, a precarious unsteady state that is likely at any time to lead the individual into some form of alienation (Goffman 1967:11 7).

W ecades of sociological research have shown that social inequality in education is enduring, despite

the massive social efforts that have been made to ameliorate between-group differences in achievement and attainment. With time, sociological theory and research

have deciphered many mechanisms that allow for reproduction in education. Studies on tracking and ability grouping (Abraham 1989; Gamoran 1992; Gamoran and Weinstein 1998; Hallinan 1996; Kilgore 1991; Oakes 1985; Page 1991; Resh 1998; Shavit 1984; S0rensen and Hallinan 1986), teachers' expectations (Alexander, Entwisle, and Bedinger 1994; Brophy 1983; Harvey and Slatin 1975; Raudenbush, Rowan, and Cheong 1993; Rist 1 970; Yair 1 997), curricular differentiation (Friedkin and Thonras 1 997; Gamoran 1987; Lee and Bryk 1988; Oakes, Gamoran, and Page 1 992; S0rensen 1 989; Stevenson, Schiller, and Schneider 1 994),

Sociology of Education 2000, Vol. 73 (October): 247-269 247



248 Yair

and counseling of students (Cicourel and Kitsuse 1963; Delany 1991; LeTendre 1996; Oakes and Guiton 1 995; Troman 1988) have repeatedly disclosed unintended consequences, among which are the exacerbation of racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic inequalities in students' academic achievements, educational and occupational aspirations, and future attainments.

Reflecting the credo of opportunity, these studies have assumed that social inequalities in students' outcomes are intensified by the provision of unequal educational opportunities (Coleman et al. 1966; Hallinan 1988) and have unearthed many such mechanisms. Conceptualized in terms of opportunities to learn, coverage of content, or time on task (see Barr and Dreeben 1 983; McPartland and Schneider 1 996; Walberg 1 988), the studies (such as Kilgore and Pendleton 1 993; Oakes 1985; Page 1991; S0rensen 1989) have shown that organizational and cultural factors contribute to the production of inequality and the setting of limits on achievements. They have found that tracks, curricular sequences, and teaching practices all con- struct divergent learning trajectories for socially different students, enlarging small inequalities to socially significant ones.

Notwithstanding the vast knowledge they have accumulated about mechanisms of reproduction in education, most empirical studies in this domain have remained distanced one step from the arena in which actual learning and social inequality in learning take place: students' engagement versus alienation from instruction. Similarly, theoret- ical explanations of social inequality in education do not fully articulate the mechanisms that link organizational characteristics and students' outcomes.

To eliminate this gap, I conducted a study to investigate whether students' engagement with or alienation from instruction deter- mines the extent to which students actually take advantage of classroom opportunities to learn and, as a result, their learning outcomes. I also sought to assess the extent to which social forces affect students' alienation from instruction and to model alienation from instruction as a function of the encounter between instructional characteristics and out-

of-school preoccupations that vie for students' attention during class. The study estimated the extent to which instructional methods and strategies influence the preva- lence of students' engagement in classrooms and buffer the alienating influences of external contexts, and for which social groups.

ENGAGEMENT AND ALIENATION

Students' engagement with instruction is the product of an interaction between opposing forces, some in the immediate context and some more distant (Lewin 1951). To learn, students have to pay attention to whatever transpires in instructional moments. If they do not focus on the immediate instructional context, they will not experience instructional opportunities or gain from the potential effects of these opportunities on their achievements, knowledge, and interests. From a phenomenological point of view, engaging with the "paramount reality" of instruction (Berger and Luckman 1 967) is a necessary condition for learning, whatever strategy a teacher uses. If students do not pay attention to their immediate instructional context, they are likely to shut out educational opportunities, even if instruction is relevant to them and the teacher is a skilled profes- sional. If they do attend to instruction, they are likely to learn something, even if they find the subject matter boring and irrelevant and the teacher is incompetent.

Although engagement with instruction may seem an easy task, it is indeed an achievement, since students are constantly affected and seduced by out-of-classroom contexts (Alexander 1 997). From this dynam- ic viewpoint, learning is a function of an interaction between students, their social contexts, and the characteristics of classroom instruction (Sternberg and Wagner 1 994). Metaphorically, students' minds constitute a battlefield (Lewin 1951) on which their life worlds and different roles and engagements (such as family, work, and leisure activities) continually demand attention. Each context exerts pressure on an individual's consciousness, even when the individual is not present in it. Furthermore, contexts differ in their abil-



Educational Battlefields in America 249

ity to seduce or swamp an individual's consciousness. Some contexts are more binding or engulfing-what Coser (1 974) called "greedy institutions"- whereas others have only flimsy, temporary effects on attention.

This study drew on Goffman's (1 967) work in defining students' engagement versus various forms of alienation from instruction. According to Goffman, people are supposed to be fully attentive to the social setting, immersing themselves in interaction. However, as Goffman aptly suggested, they can be physically present in interactions yet only go through the motions, failing to be actually engaged with the immediate situation. For example, external observers can see students sitting in class, looking attentive to instruction, taking notes, and nodding in agreement. Yet on deeper scrutiny, the students are found to have been staring into space, scribbling their names, or writing nonrelevant notes.

Goffman (1 967) suggested that under cer- tain conditions, individuals become disen- gaged from interaction, thereby breaking the fragile moral order of encounters. He identified four types of alienation from interaction. The first type, external preoccupation, suggests that while physically present in an encounter, individuals may direct their attention toward external preoccupations. Thus, students may physically sit in classrooms, yet think about nonclassroom issues, such as problems in the family, obligations at work, or their social lives. If external distractions and pressures gain the upper hand in the battle over their attention, students will squander many instructional opportunities.

In the second type, self-consciousness, interactants sometimes focus on themselves or themselves as interactants; by not paying attention to an interaction, students' consciousness is detached from the encounter and they become alienated. When students are self-conscious, their teachers have to tra- verse longer and different paths to engage them in learning.

The third and fourth types, interaction-consciousness and other-consciousness, depict sit- uations in which individuals become preoccupied with either the interaction itself or other interactants in the encounter. In both

instances, they are cognitively absent although physically present. Hence, students may become overly involved with the classroom as a social order (Waller 1932), with teachers' specific maneuvers, or with other school activities and demands. This study combined these two types of alienation into a single category: school preoccupation. Conceptually, if students become "school conscious," they miss out on the main objective of their physical presence in the classroom and evade instruction.

This conceptualization of alienation from instruction has several merits. It shows that behavioral manifestations and physical atten- dance do not necessarily attest to individuals' cognitive presence in concrete settings. Thus, external observations of instructional opportunities can never reveal the true level of students' engagement or alienation from instruction. Consequently, an empirical demonstration of Goffman's position can shed new light on traditional investigations of learning and time on task (see Karweit 1 983; Rosenshine 1 980) that implicitly assumed that a calm physical presence could be equat- ed with cognitive presence.

Social versus Instructional Factors

This study conceptualized students' engagement in terms of an ongoing contest among classroom instruction, students' background characteristics, and out-of-classroom contexts (Alexander 1 997). What teachers do in class affects the strain that external concerns exert on students' attention. Similarly, to the extent that external contexts become more exact- ing, teachers must make greater instructional efforts to win their students' attention. Highly engaging instructional settings encourage students to immerse themselves in learning, buffering their consciousness from external intrusions, and hence maximize the use of opportunities to learn, even for extremely dis- advantaged students. In contrast, other instructional settings may alienate students, allowing them to withdraw quietly into nonacademic domains, thereby widening the gap between instructional opportunities and students' learning.

Conceptually, I distinguished between three



250 Yair

distinct sets of factors, or sources of influence on, students' engagement and alienation from instruction: (1) instructional factors, including methods, strategies, and subject matter (Bidwell and Kasarda 1980), that vary within schools and may differentially buffer or decou- ple the effects of nonclassroom contexts; (2) students' experience in stressful nonschool environments (at home and work and in settings for leisure activities) that may intensify students' preoccupation with external issues and hence cause alienation from instruction; and (3) students' personal and background characteristics, like race, socioeconomic status (SES), gender, and previous school achievements. Figure 1 presents the conceptual model that underlies the study.

Pulling from Within: Instructional Variables

In the study, I proposed tentative hypotheses about the effects of instructional methods, instructional strategies, and subject matter on students' engagement. The first factor in Figure 1 focuses on formal aspects of instructional methods. According to Simmel (1950), formal aspects of social relationships affect individuals' consciousness within them. For example, individuals' presence in a dyad is much more demanding of mutual recogni- tion and acknowledgment than individuals' presence in a triad or larger group. I hypothesized that different instructional methods (see, for example, Bidwell and Kasarda 1 980;

Figure 1. Social and Instructional Production of Engagement and Alienation from Instruction: A Conceptual Model

Instructional Variables External Contexts

Engagement and Instructional Alienation from Famnily Strategies Instruction: Life

Self, School, and External Preoccupation

Subject Matter \ Leisure! Personal

Gender Age Achievements Race SES

Background Student Variables




Bossert 1979) may affect students' engagement and mediate the strains exerted by external contexts. On the basis of previous studies (Block 1984; Bossert 1979; Kutnick 1 988), I hypothesized that more individuated and active instructional methods (such as work in small groups or laboratories) demand greater involvement by students than do teacher-directed methods. Paradoxically, teacher-centered instructional methods that aim for greater "panopticon control" (Foucault 1 977) of students may actually allow external factors to produce the highest levels of alienation from instruction.

The second factor in Figure 1 depicts the effects of instructional strategies on students' engagement. Studies have shown that the characteristics of instructional tasks have significant effects on students' motivation (Ames 1992; Blumenfeld 1992; Paris and Turner 1 994). Educational researchers, psycholo- gists, and sociologists agree that instruction has positive effects on students' learning if it (1) is based on authentic or relevant situa- tions (Newmann, Marks, and Gamoran 1996; Sizer 1 992), (2) uses a wide array of students' skills and interests (Gardner 1 993), (3) poses real challenges for students (Csikszentmihalyi, Rathunde, and Whalen 1993), and (4) puts students in academically demanding regimes (Bryk, Lee, and Holland 1 993).

The third factor in Figure 1 is the effect of subject matter on students' engagement with instruction. School subjects may exhibit various degrees of pull for students' attention, irrespective of instructional method or strategy. Following previous studies in this domain (for example, Bidwell and Yasumoto 1999; Stodolsky 1988; Stodolsky and Grossman 1 995), I suggest that hierarchical school subjects (like mathematics, foreign languages, and the natural sciences) are more demanding of students' engagement than are horizontally structured school subjects (like litera- ture, English, and the social sciences). In other words, inattention to part of a lesson in a horizontally structured subject may have minor detrimental effects on achievements in that subject, whereas inattention to part of a lesson in a hierarchical subject may impede the accumulation of knowledge in that area.

Pulling from the Outside: Home, Work, and Leisure Life

As Figure 1 shows, external contexts (such as home, work, and leisure environments) may exert various degrees of influence on students' alienation from instruction. For example, different data sets have shown that over time, a greater proportion of American adolescents have taken jobs after school (Greenberger and Steinberg 1 986; Mortimer and Shanahan 1994), some for 12 to 20 hours a week; that some employers pressure students to work longer hours (Alexander 1 997; Steinberg 1 996); and that under cer- tain conditions, the experience of early work is detrimental to school outcomes (Alexander 1 997). Furthermore, there are significant variations in the quality of experiences that students have at home, at work, or with friends-from warm, accepting ones to harsh and stressful ones (Steinberg 1 996). In addition, as sociologists of education have long argued, social and leisure activities compete with academic status characteristics (Coleman 1 961). Thus, there is reason to sus- pect that strong commitments to work, leisure, and peer activities may compete for students' engagement while in class. This short review suggests that the investment of many hours and negative experiences in nonschool settings may spill over into the classroom, encroaching on students' ability to engage with instruction, so that students with strong nonschool commitments and negative experiences will exhibit higher rates of external preoccupations than will students who are less pulled by social and leisure commitments and have positive experiences in nonschool contexts.

Personal and Background Characteristics

Since students of different racial backgrounds tend to have different levels of achievement and aspirations, reflecting both SES and cultural factors (Hallinan 1 996; Kao and Tienda 1 998; Lareau and Hovart 1 999; Page 1 991), I hypothesized that different racial groups would exhibit various rates of engagement with instruction and that similar effects could



252 Yair

be expected between boys and girls. In addition, age is likely to influence students' alienation from instruction, since older students are more critical of school and are psycholog- ically more preoccupied with themselves (Muus 1 982) than are younger students and thus are expected to exhibit higher rates of self-preoccupation. Students' academic achievements are also likely to correlate with rates of engagement: The lower the students' achievements, the higher the expected odds of alienation from instruction.

The study has three major objectives (1 ) to provide an initial test for the tug-of-war perspective on instructional and social production of engagement and alienation from instruction, (2) to assess the extent to which engagement and alienation from instruction are instructionally produced and socially distributed, (3) to evaluate the extent to which high-quality instruction can minimize the intrusion of external factors that alienate students' attention in class, especially among minority groups and students who are at risk of alienation from instruction.

METHOD

Sample and Data

The study was based on data collected during the first year of the Sloan Study of Youth and Social Development, a U.S. national longitudinal study, begun in 1993, to investigate what adolescents think about their future lives (Bidwell, Csikszentmihalyi, Hedges, and Schneider 1 992). The 12 research sites, which were geographically distributed throughout the United States, were chosen to satisfy variations in areas of residence (urban, suburban, and rural), labor force composition and par- ticipation, and race and ethnicity. Data were collected at both the elementary and secondary school levels, resulting in a sample of 33 schools across the 1 2 sites. The sample included 1 3 high schools, 5 K-6 elementary schools, 3 K-8 elementary schools, and 12 middle schools (mostly 6th to 8th grade). Students were randomly selected from class lists in grades 6, 8, 1 0, and 1 2, stratified by gender, race, and ability level.

In the current study, I made innovative use of a unique data-gathering technique, the experience sampling method (ESM) (see Csikszentmihalyi and Larson 1987; Csikszentmihalyi, Larson, and Prescott 1 977; Larson 1989). The ESM is used to capture objective aspects of experience (what students are doing, where they are located at specific times, and with whom they are inter- acting), as well as students' subjective assess- ments of the characteristics of contexts. It also allows for an assessment of subjective aspects of students' experiences (such as mood, motivation, and sense of success) in the sampled settings. The method "bridges the precision of paper-and-pencil measurement and the ecological validity of on-site observational techniques [and] its contextual immediacy avoids the biases and distortions to which more global self-report measures are sometimes prone" (Csikszentmihalyi, Rathunde, and Whalen 1993:49).

Students were given digital wristwatches that were programmed to emit signals (beeps) eight times a day (from 7:30 A.M. to 10:30 P.M.) for one week. When beeped, they were requested to answer a short questionnaire (see the Appendix) about their experiences at the time of the beep, the activity they were engaged in, and their thoughts and mood. The total response rate was 71 percent, with a range of 15-56 beeps per student. However, there were two problems with missing cases in this study. First, the students responded, on average, 34 out of the 56 times they were beeped during the study. Although missing beeps were evenly distributed over the day, I have no information about contextual features related to these omissions. Second, students did not always fill out the entire questionnaire, especially the time of the beeps and their responses. An analysis of these missing cases suggests that there are minor between-group differences in responses, in no case exceeding a difference of 4 percent for age, gender, race, or SES groups.

Originally, 865 students provided data on 28,193 daily experiences. To focus on students' engagement and alienation from instruction, I used several filters. First, I omit- ted missing cases on the time of response




(1,479 beeps, or 5.2 percent of the sample). Second, I used only those experiences in which the students responded to a beep within a span of no more than 10 minutes after the signal, culminating in 24,020 experiences. Third, I used only school-related beeps (11,989 experiences). Finally, I selected the beeps in academic classes while instruction was taking place. This procedure produced a sample of 4,058 learning experiences.

Measuring Engagement versus Alienation from Instruction

The ESM asks students, "Where were you at the time of the beep?" and "What was on your mind?" To distinguish between engagement and the different forms of alienation from instruction, the Sloan study's research staff at the National Opinion Research Center coded students' answers to the "place" and "thought" questions. I conceptualized students' alienation from instruction in terms of a disjuncture between students' physical setting (like a mathematics class) and what the students actually think about (such as "my girlfriend"). Since there were no predesignat- ed codes in the questionnaire, the research staff developed activity codes from students' responses, taken verbatim from the question- naires. This procedure culminated in a comprehensive list that allowed the construction of different independent variables (like instructional method) as well. The lists were compared for consistency with previous ESM studies (Csikszentmihalyi and Larson 1986), which reported a 95 percent rate of interrater agreement (Csikszentmihalyi et al. 1 993).

In operationalizing Goffman's (1967) approach to alienation from interaction, I used four mutually exclusive nominal variables: students' engagement, school consciousness, self-consciousness, and external preoccupations. Students' engagement denotes whether the students were attentive to their lessons (a match between place and thought). School consciousness (equivalent to Goffman's interaction consciousness) refers to the times when the students' thoughts focused on school issues but not on matters related to their immediate lesson (for

instance, thinking about lunch while being in an English lesson). Self-consciousness refers to the times when the students concentrated on themselves (such as thinking about romantic affairs in mathematics class). External preoccupations refers to the times when the students' thoughts focused on out-of-school issues (for example, thinking about family matters during academic classes).

Independent Variables

Reflecting the model in Figure 1, three groups of independent variables were used to assess statistical effects of different variables on students' engagement and alienation. The first, students' background (gender, race, grade level, SES, and achievements), were measured as follows: Gender: girls coded 0, boys coded 1; race (dummy variables): Asians, whites, Hispanics, and African Americans; grade level: 6th, 8th, 10th, or 12th grade; SES: where 1 denotes poor community and 5 denotes high-status community (this is not an aggregate variable, but was set as part of the sampling of sites); and students' achievements, measured by grades on the last report card: mostly A; half A, half B; mostly B; half B, half C; and mostly C and below.

The second group of variables, instructional characteristics, included the following:

1. Subject matter (dummy variables): mathematics, English, reading, natural sciences, foreign language, and social science classes.

2. Instructional methods (dummy variables): teacher's lecture, class discussion, work in laboratory, group work, individualized work, classroom presentations, and television and video presentations compared to unknown methods.

3. Instructional strategies: Perceived relevance-the extent to which an activity is important for students' immediate and long- term aims-was measured by two items, "Was this activity important to you?" and "How important was it in relation to your future goals?" The two items were combined as a single measure (Cronbach alpha = 0.73). Skills-the extent to which an activity requires students to exhibit high levels of skills-was measured by a single item (on a 10-point scale, worded "Your skills in the activity").



254 Yair

Challenge, another single-item variable, measured the extent to which the activity was challenging to the student. Finally, academic demand, a 5-point measure, was constructed from students' responses to the question: "Were you doing the main activity because (a) you wanted to, (b) you had to, (c) you had nothing else to do?" The students were allowed to record more than one option. The highest academic demand ("had to") was coded 5, and the lowest academic demand ("wanted to") was coded 1. A value of 4 was assigned to (b + c); 3 to (a + b); and 2 to (a + c). Academic demand is a proxy (and less- than-desired) measure for the extent to which students could freely choose to participate in class, namely, whether this was a required or an elective course. Since skills, challenge, and academic demand were measured with a single item, it is impossible to estimate their reliability statistically. Future studies should elab- orate the ESM to allow for a more robust esti- mation of measures of instructional strategies.

The third group of variables measured out- of-school influences on students' engagement and alienation from instruction. A general mood variable measured students' aggregate experiences at home, at work, and in leisure pursuits. Four scales were used to assess the average mood in these out-of-school contexts: active mood (the extent to which students feel active versus passive), control mood (the extent to which students feel in control of the situation), intrinsic motivation (whether the students have intrinsic interest in the activity), and sense of accomplishment (whether the students feel that they accom- plished something during the activity). (See the items on the left-hand side of the Appendix and recently published results (Yair 2000) for the confirmatory measurement model for the entire sample.) These four scales are highly correlated, so a single combined measure was computed for the three contexts (context mood). For the purpose of this study, a combined score was computed for each student (general mood). A series of five variables measured the aggregate time that the students spent on homework, watching television, doing chores and errands, working, or hanging out.

At-risk status was decided if the students'

general mood was 1 SD below the average and if the students spent, on average, more than three hours a day hanging out with peers and less than a half hour doing homework.

Analyses

Apart from simple descriptive statistics, I used a series of logistic regressions to estimate the effects of the independent variables on the probability of engagement and external preoccupation. Like ordinary least-squares regression, logistic regression allows the researcher to estimate the relative contribution of independent variables in the model, keeping other variables in the model constant (see Menard 1995; Wright 1995). Finally, it should be noted that in this exploratory, cross-sectional study, causal priorities among the variables could not be determined.

FINDINGS

Engagement versus Alienation from Instruction

Table 1 presents breakdowns of the major independent variables on students' engagement and type of alienation from instruction. It shows that, on average, the students were engaged with their lessons only 54 percent of the time. That is, they attended for only about half the time to the resources that the schools provided for academic instruction and to the opportunities to learn that their teachers presented. External preoccupations encroached on the students' attention 35.8 percent of the time; self-consciousness was recorded in 6 percent of the beeps; and school consciousness was recorded in 4.2 percent of the beeps. The students' high rate of alienation from instruction (46.0 percent) is in line with Goffman's (1 967) insight that classrooms house disappearances no less than appearances.

In addition, Table 1 indicates that students' engagement and alienation from instruction is correlated with background and instructional characteristics. First, race is a strong predictor of engagement with instruction: The Asian and




Table 1. Breakdown of Students' Engagement and Types of Alienation on Select Variables (percentages; N = 4,058)

Variable Category Percentage Engaged School Self- Externally Ch-square/ in Sample Conscious Conscious Preoccupied F-test

Total 54.0 4.2 6.0 35.8

Gender Boys 41.2 55.8 4.1 5.7 34.4 Girls 58.8 52.8 4.3 6.2 36.7 3.68

Race Asians 6.6 56.5 4.5 5.6 33.5 Whites 67.5 55.5 4.7 6.3 33.5

Hispanics 10.0 50.0 1.7 4.2 44.1 African Americans 15.9 49.4 3.7 5.9 41.0 32.72***

Grade 6 19.9 62.1 3.5 2.9 31.6

8 ?8.3 53.8 3.8 4.1 38.3

10 29.5 52.7 5.0 8.0 34.3 12 22.3 49.0 4.4 8.4 38.2 63.37***

Grades Mostly A 34.9 54.9 5.4 5.8 33.8 on Last Half A, half B 21.9 54.2 5.1 5.9 34.9 Report Card Mostly B 10.2 55.9 2.4 7.0 34.6

Half B, half C 10.9 50.7 2.7 7.7 39.0 Mostly C and below 7.5 46.7 2.6 3.6 47.0 37.42***

Status At risk 20 49.7 4.3 6.0 40.4 Not at risk 80 55.1 4.0 5.9 34.6 9.73*

Subject Mathematics 23.8 62.8 3.4 4.3 29.6 Matter English 23.3 48.0 3.7 6.9 41.4

Reading 3.1 54.3 2.4 1.6 41.7 Natural sciences 21.1 56.6 5.2 5.7 32.4

Foreign languages 10.0 52.3 3.4 7.6 36.6 Social sciences 18.6 48.3 5.6 7.2 38.9 73.50***

Instructional Lecture 18.0 54.4 5.1 6.4 34.2 Method Discussion 3.9 63.1 3.8 8.8 24.4

Work in labs 1.9 73.7 1.3 5.3 19.7 Work in groups 0.9 73.0 2.7 5.4 18.9 Individualized 14.4 66.8 2.9 3.8 26.5 Presentations 0.8 66.7 6.1 27.3

TV/video 5.6 55.9 3.9 6.1 34.9 Unknown 54.4 48.5 4.6 6.2 40.7 100.687***

Instructional Relevance 5.70 5.1 7 4.97 4.62 F = 54.86*** Strategies Challenge 5.21 4.65 4.19 3.84 F= 70.85*** (Averages) Skills 6.57 6.60 6.29 6.40 F= 2.20

Academic demand 4.35 3.74 4.04 3.65 F= 50.7***

N 2,193 172 242 1,451 4,058

Note: Central tendencies of this sample cannot be generalized to the U.S. student population without great caution.

*p < .05, p < .001.

white students were the most engaged (56.5 percent and 55.5 percent, respectively), and the Hispanic and African American students had the highest rates of alienation from instruction (50 percent and 50.6 percent, respectively). Furthermore, the major effect of race is on external, nonschool preoccupations, to which the Hispanic and African American students were strongly prone.

Table 1 also shows a linear reduction in engagement with grade level. Whereas the 6th-grade students were attentive 62 percent of the time, the 12th-grade students were attentive only 49 percent of the time. Furthermore, there is a linear rise in self-consciousness with age, which reflects the fact that the 1 Oth- and 1 2th-grade students tended to be more preoccupied with themselves



256 Yair

than were the 6th- and 8th-grade students. Overall, these findings suggest that as students mature, teachers have greater difficulty securing their attention and the students' alienation becomes more prevalent and the contents of their preoccupations change.

Students' school achievements are correlated with engagement and alienation from instruction as well. Overall, the high-achieving students tended to be engaged with their lessons more than were the low-achieving students and, when alienated, were twice as likely to be preoccupied with school consciousness. In contrast, the low-achieving students, especially those with "mostly C and below," were significantly more engrossed in external preoccupations.

At-risk status is also correlated with engagement and alienation from instruction. The students who were at risk were less engaged in academic classes (a 5.4 percent difference) and more externally preoccupied than were the students who had a good overall mood in nonschool contexts and did not devote their free time to hanging out with peers.

As Table 1 indicates, the students' engagement with instruction significantly varied with instructional method. The highest rates of engagement were for work in laboratories (73.7 percent), work in groups (73 percent), individual or group presentations (66.7 percent), and discussions (63.1 percent); the lowest were for teachers' lectures (54.4 percent) and television or video presentations (55.9 percent). Thus, different instructional methods engage students to various degrees, although they do not differentially affect the type of alienation from instruction.

The subject matter taught in class also affected students' engagement. Mathematics held the students' attention the most (62.8 percent of the time), followed by the natural sciences (56.6 percent) and reading (54.3 percent). In contrast, foreign languages (52.3 percent), the social sciences (48.3 percent), and English (48.0 percent) held the students' attention the least. It is interesting to note that subject matter also affected the type of alienation from instruction. For example, although reading and the natural sciences had similar rates of engagement, reading was much more sensitive to the intrusion of external preoccupations than

were the natural sciences (41.7 percent and 32.4 percent, respectively).

Finally, the analyses of variance (bottom of Table 1) indicated that three of the four instructional strategies significantly affect students' engagement. The more students per- ceive relevant instruction, the more they feel challenged, and the greater the academic demand on students-the more the students are engaged with instruction-the less prone they are to external preoccupations.

Instruction versus Social Structure

This section compares the competing effects of students' background and context characteristics with those of instructional variables on two of the four dependent variables: students' engagement and external preoccupation (con- stituting 89.8 percent of the beeps). A series of four logistic regression models was used to estimate the relative contribution of each independent variable to the prediction of students' engagement and external preoccupation. The baseline model (Model 1) estimates the effects of student background; the second model adds the effects of external environments (pulling- out factors), and Models 3 and 4 estimate the "pulling-in" effects of instructional characteristics. Tables 2 and 3 present the estimated coefficients for each predictor (B) and the standard error (SE) of the estimate. The fit of the model to the data is presented at the bottom of the tables (-2 log-likelihood).

The results for Model 1 in Tables 2 and 3 indicate no association between students' gender and community social class with either engagement or external preoccupation. In contrast, students' race is significantly associated with the likelihood of engagement and alienation from instruction; that is, Hispanic and African American students are less likely than Asian and white students to be engaged with instruction and much more likely to be externally preoccupied. The baseline model also suggests that students' grade level (age) is a strong predictor of engagement with instruction (the lower the grade, the more engaged students are), although it is less associated with external preoccupation. Finally, Model 1 shows that low-achieving students (grades C and lower) tend to be less engaged with instruction




Table 2. Logit Coefficients from the Regression of Students' Engagement on Selected Independent Variables

Model 4: Model 1: Model 2: Model 3: Method

Backgound External Factors Subject Matter and Strategy

Variable Category B SE B SE B SE B SE

Constant .94*** .21 -.81* .35 -.59 .36 -.53 41

Gender Girls -.09 .07 -.04 .07 -.03 .07 -.1 1 .08

Race Asian (reference) Hispanic -.40* .18 -.30 .18 -.31 .19 -.34 .21 African American -.34* .1 7 -.42 .1 7 -.42* .18 -.44* .20 Whites -.1 1 .14 -.07 .14 -.07 .14 -.08 .16

SES -.04 .03 -.00 .03 .00 .03 -.00 .04

Grade level 6th (reference) 8th -.31** .10 -.1 7 .10 -.14 .10 .03 .12 1 0th -.44*** .10 -.31** .10 -.29** .11 -.18 .12 1 2th -.63*** .10 -.46*** .11 -.40*** .11 -.21 .13

Grades on Mostly A (reference) last report Half A, half B -.04 .08 -.04 .08 -.04 .08 -.01 .09 card Mostly B .04 .11 .02 .11 .03 .11 .01 .1 3

Half B, half C -.15 .11 -.13 .11 -.12 .11 -.30* .13 C and lower -.32** .12 -.22 .1 3 -.22 .1 3 -.16 .14

External General mood .25*** .04 .26*** .04 .1 4** .05 Contexts Hours TV .02 .04 .02 .04 .03 .04

Hours chores -.04 .06 -.06 .07 -.04 .07 Hours work .01 .06 .03 .06 .02 .07 Hanging out -.09*** .03 -.10*** .03 -.10** .03 Homework .1 6*** .04 .1 6*** .04 .1 3** .05

Subject Math Matter (reference)

English -.58*** .10 -.57** .11 Reading -.45* .21 -.37 .24 Sciences -.19 .10 -.1 7 .12 Foreign language -.40** .1 3 -.54*** .14 Social science -.56*** .10 -.52*** .12

Instructional Unknown (reference) Method Lecture .01 .10

Discussion .67*** .20 Work in labs .74* .31 Work in groups 1.02* .45 Individualized .55*** .12 Presentations .59 .41 TV/video .62*** .17

Instructional Relevance .10*** .01 Strategies Challenge .10*** .01

Skills -.02 .01 Academic demand .23*** .02

-2 log-likelihood 4729.8 4674.6 4625.9 3818.1 DF 12 19 23 34 Correct classification

(percent) 55.6 57.8 58.9 65.31

*p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001.



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Table 3. Logit Coefficients from the Regression of External Preoccupation on Selected Independent Variables

Model 4: Model 1: Model 2: Model 3: Method

Backgound External Factors Subject Matter and Strategy

Variable Category B SE B SE B SE B SE

Constant -1.1 8*** .22 .26 .37 .04 .38 -.18 .43

Gender Girls .10 .07 .07 .07 .07 .07 .15 .08

Race Asian (reference) Hispanic .56** .19 .46* .19 .48* .19 .50* .22 African American .40* .18 .43* .18 .43* .18 .43* .21 White -.07 .15 -.07 .15 .08 .15 .05 .17

SES -.00 .03 -.02 .03 -.03 .03 -.01 .04

Grade level 6th (reference) 8th .25* .11 .12 .11 .09 .11 -.04 .12 10th .22* .11 .11 .11 .11 .11 .01 .13

1 2th .39v .11 .25* .12 .22 .11 .03 .13

Grades on Mostly A (reference) last report Half A, half B .06 .09 .06 .09 .07 .09 .02 .10 card Mostly B .07 .12 .08 .12 .08 .12 .07 .13

Half B, half C .15 .11 .11 .11 .10 .11 .28* .13 C and lower .51 .13 .43** .13 .44*** .13 .43** .15

External General mood -.22*** .04 -.22*** .04 -.07 .05 Contexts Hours TV .03 .04 .02 .04 .02 .04

Hours chores -.00 .07 .00 .07 -.01 .07 Hours work .02 .06 .01 .06 .02 .07 Hanging out .08** .03 .08** .03 .07* .03 Homework -.1 3** .04 -.1 4** .04 -.1 2* .05

Subject Math (reference) Matter English .53** .10 .48*** .12

Reading .54* .22 .48* .24 Sciences .12 .11 .08 .12 Foreign languages .37** .13 .46** .15 Social science .40*** .11 .32** .12

Instructional Unknown (reference) Method Lecture -.02 .10

Discussion -. 76*** .22 Work in labs -.57 .34 Work in groups -1.20* .55 Individualized -.45*** .12 Presentations -.34 .44 TV/video -.57*** .17

Instructional Relevance -.12*** .02 Strategies Challenge -.09*** .01

Skills .02 .01 Academic demand -.22*** .03

-2 log-likelihood 4474.8 4430 4396.8 3621.8 DF 12 19 23 34 Correct classification (percentage) 64.1 64.3 64.4 69.8

* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001.




and much more externally preoccupied than do those with higher grades.

The addition of external factors to the logistic regression (Model 2) indicates that students' general mood in nonschool contexts is significantly associated with engagement and alienation from instruction; thus, the better the overall mood at home, with friends, and at work, the more engaged students are in class and the less likely they are to be externally preoccupied. Furthermore, the more time that students spend hanging out with peers, the more likely they are to report external preoccupations in academic classes and the lower the odds of their engagement with instruction. The oppo- site is the case concerning homework; the more time that students spend preparing homework, the more likely they are to be engaged with instruction and the lower the odds of their being externally preoccupied.

When external factors are modeled, the effects of students' background decrease significantly. Although the effect of race on external preoccupation remains, the category Hispanic is not more predictive of students' engagement with instruction. Thus, knowledge of the daily whereabouts of Hispanic students and their mood in nonschool environs accounts for the effect of their ethnic origin. However, such is not the case for African American students, who are still less likely to be engaged with instruction and more likely to be externally preoccupied than are Asian and white students.

Furthermore, Model 2 shows that external factors also decrease the effect of grade level. Taking students' nonschool activities and mood into consideration decreases the effects of grade level on students' engagement (only 10th- and 12th-grade students are somewhat less likely to be engaged with instruction). The effect of grade level on the odds of external preoccupation is almost nullified. Finally, Model 2 also nullifies the effect of students' achievement on engagement, though it only modest- ly affects the odds of lower-achieving students being externally preoccupied in class.

The inclusion of subject matter in the analyses (Model 3) demonstrates the significant association of subject matter with the odds of engagement and alienation from instruction. Students in mathematics (the reference category) and natural science classes reported the

highest rates of engaging with instruction and the lowest rates of being externally preoccupied. In contrast, students in English, social sciences, reading, and foreign language classes reported significantly lower rates of engaging with instruction and were more prone to external preoccupations. These results support the findings of other studies (Bidwell and Yasumoto 1 999; Stodolsky 1 988; Stodolsky and Grossman 1995) that hierarchical school subjects are different from horizontal ones, suggesting that curricular structure also affects students' attention in class.

Adding subject matter to the equation further decreases the effect of grade level on students' engagement and nullifies its effect on external preoccupation. Actually, the effects of grade level on external preoccupation are wholly explained by taking students' nonschool investments and within-school curricula into consideration. In other words, age-related nonschool experiences and grade-related curricular provision explain the age-related probability of being externally preoccupied.

Model 4, which adds the effects of instructional methods and strategies, considerably improves the fit of the data. Compared to nonidentified and teacher-directed lectures, other instructional methods prove to be more engaging and less prone to the intrusion of external preoccupations. Group work, work in laboratories, and classroom discussions evince the highest rates of engagement with instruction and are more resistant to external preoccupations. The use of television and video presentations has similar effects.

It is interesting that teachers' lectures is the most prevalent instructional method (40 percent of all identified methods) even though this method produces the lowest rate of engagement, capturing students' attention only 54.0 percent of the time. Although individualized instruction (31 percent of all identified methods) is more engaging (66.8 percent) than a teacher's lecture, it does not save enough students from nonacademic temptations or external pressures that encroach on their attention. Overall, the two most popular instructional methods enable external preoccupations to produce high rates of alienation from instruction. In contrast to the overwhelming domi- nance of traditional instructional methods,



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more progressive and active-oriented methods, such as work in laboratories, giving presentations, and work in groups, are conspicuously rare. Although their rates of engagement ranged from 66.7 percent to 73.7 percent (see Table 1), these methods were reported to be used only 8.0 percent of the time. This provision of instructional methods partly explains why many students, irrespective of social background, tend to be alienated from instruction.

Instructional strategies also affect the odds of engagement and alienation from instruction. The more relevant instruction is to students' lives, the more it challenges students' ability, and the greater the academic demand that students experience in class, the more likely they are to be engaged with instruction. In contrast, external preoccupations swamp students' attention both in nonrelevant and unchalleng- ing classes and when they have more choice in attending classes (such as electives).

The inclusion of instructional methods and strategies in the model wholly nullifies the net effect of grade level. The results show that the grade-related odds of engaging with instruction are mediated by grade-related differences in instructional methods and strategies (that is, classes are perceived to be less challenging, less relevant, and less academically demanding at the upper grade levels). In contrast, the effects of race on external preoccupation remain intact, suggesting that racial inequalities in the odds of alienation are not related to within- school disparities in the provision of instruction or to differential nonschool experiences.

Finally, while the addition of subject matter, instructional methods, and strategies improved the fit of the regression model, Models 3 and 4 did not diminish the effects of external factors on engagement and alienation from instruction. This finding supports the thesis that external nonschool factors are in a constant tug-of-war with instructional characteristics over students' attention in academic classes.

Who Benefits from Good Instruction?

In this section, I focus on the effects of instructional strategies on students' engagement, comparing rates of engagement

among different ethnic groups and between students who are at risk alienation from instruction versus those who are not at risk, broken down by quality of instruction. My major aim is to estimate the extent to which the manipulation of instructional strategies can compensate for the alienating influences of nonschool experiences. Specifically, I report the estimates of how much students, from different ethnic groups and at-risk sta- tuses, gain (in terms of engagement rates) when instruction is challenging, relevant, and academically demanding and uses their skills compared to when it is not.

The four instructional strategy variables were recoded into dichotomies, in which "low quality" was defined as any measure that was 1 SD below the mean for each variable. Table 4 presents the engagement rates for Asian, Hispanic, African American, and white students, broken down by at-risk status and quality of instruction. The bottom of the table shows the gap in engagement rates for each group in each column.

Whereas the previous results indicated that race and instructional strategies have independent effects on engagement, Table 4 reveals social differentials in the effects of instruction on students' engagement. It also provides interesting evidence on the efficacy of instruction for at-risk students.

To begin with, Table 4 suggests that Hispanic students are highly "sensitive" to instruction. Although they exhibit extremely low rates of engagement when instruction is of low quality (dropping to 21.3 percent when instruction is not challenging for at-risk students), Hispanic students become highly engaged when instruction is challenging, relevant, and academically demanding and uses their skills. In some cases, Hispanic students even lead all other groups in engaging with instruction.

In contrast, African American students exhibit the lowest slopes (smallest gaps), suggesting a lower responsiveness to variations in the quality of instruction. Although their engagement rates are higher when instruction is challenging, uses their skills, and is academically demanding, these students are still the least likely to be engaged with instruction.




Table 4. Engagement Rates by Race, At-Risk Status, and Quality of Instruction

At-Risk Students Students not At-Risk

Low-Quality Race Challenge Relevance Skills Academic Challenge Relevance Skills Academic Instruction Demand Demand

Asians 36.8 37.5 66.7 43.8 48.9 42.1 57.1 44.3 Hispanics 21.3 27.9 36.4 33.3 32.4 29.6 35.6 47.6 African Americans 42.1 57.7 41.4 34.8 40.2 40.0 42.4 41.3 Whites 38.3 40.3 50.7 28.5 46.5 45.5 51.4 38.7

High-Quality Instruction Asians 76.5 73.0 61.0 70.3 59.7 59.7 54.8 61.3

Hispanics 70.8 56.6 50.5 52.2 62.5 56.7 54.5 53.1 African Americans 58.8 49.2 56.7 57.6 54.5 50.6 50.3 52.8 Whites 58.7 55.1 48.2 56.6 64.3 60.8 57.9 64.0

Engagement Asians 39.7 35.5 -5.7 26.5 10.8 17.6 -2.3 17.0 Gap Hispanics 49.5 28.7 14.1 18.9 30.1 27.1 18.9 5.5

African Americans 16.7 -8.5 15.3 22.8 14.3 10.6 7.9 11.5 Whites 20.4 14.8 -2.5 28.1 17.8 15.3 6.5 25.3

These results suggest that the capacity of instruction to engage students is socially stratified. While Hispanic students are highly responsive to instruction, African American students are the least likely to respond to instructional variations. Challenging, relevant, and academically demanding instruction is always more engaging than boring and nonrelevant instruction, but the results suggest that the capacity of instruction to keep alienating influences at bay is socially mediated.

Furthermore, Table 4 suggests that students who are at risk are much more affected by variations in the quality of instruction than are those who are not at risk. At-risk students- those who feel depressed outside school, invest almost no time in doing homework, and hang out for many hours with friends-are the most likely to be alienated from instruction when it is boring and nonrelevant. However, when instruction is challenging, academically demanding, and relevant, these students are almost as attentive in class as are those who are not at risk. Under such conditions, students who are at risk may even be more engaged than their less troubled peers. These results suggest that students who are at risk tend to reap greater benefits from every improvement in the quality of instruction.

It is interesting that the benefit that at-risk

students gain from challenging, relevant, and academically demanding lessons is also socially stratified. Table 4 indicates that under these conditions, Asian and Hispanic at-risk students are the most likely to engage with instruction. Paradoxically, Asian at-risk students exhibit high rates of engagement when instruction is challenging, relevant, and academically demanding (reaching up to 76.5 percent of engaged beeps). Though their rates are much lower, Hispanic at-risk students evince similar slopes.

These results suggest that minority at-risk students suffer mainly from alienation when instruction is boring, nonrelevant, and unde- manding. When instruction is challenging, relevant, and academically demanding, however, at-risk students in general, and Asian and Hispanic at-risk students in particular, close the engagement gap-and, in some cases, even exhibit the highest rates of engagement with instruction. Thus, the manipulation of instruction may offset cir- cumstances of birth and nonschool lifestyles.

DISCUSSION

This study tentatively advanced and tested a new approach to looking at social versus



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instructional antecedents of students' engagement and alienation from instruction. Expanding on Goffman's (1 967) insight about the Cartesian split between being and doing and empirically translating his conceptualization of alienation from interaction, the study advanced a phenomenological conceptualization of engagement and alienation from instruction and proposed a tentative explanatory framework for the evidence.

Although the data from the Sloan Study of Youth and Development (Bidwell et al. 1992) did not allow for a comprehensive and empirically satisfying assessment of the causal directions in the conceptual model, the unique design of the ESM and the innovative use of the data enabled me to provide initial support for the theory. For example, I found that while they sit in class and appear to be attentive, many students are actually thinking about themselves, other school activities, and external issues. I also found support for the conjecture that instructional and nonschool factors significantly affect rates of engagement and alienation from instruction and that different groups take differential advantage of instruction.

Although causal directions of influence are yet to be resolved in longitudinal designs, the results show that students' engagement with instruction was socially stratified in the sample. That is, while the Asian and white students had higher engagement rates than did the Hispanic and African American students, the Hispanic students exhibited a higher sensitivity to variations in instruction. Furthermore, the students who were at risk-those who were highly stressed outside school-seemed to be much more engaged in class when instruction was challenging, relevant, and academically demanding. Overall, these findings support the proposition that rates of engagement and alienation are instructionally produced and socially distributed.

The results show that learning occurs within diffuse organizational walls (Meyer and Rowan 1977, 1992; Scott 1995). Although classrooms are physically insulated from external environs, nonschool preoccupations constantly intrude on students' attention. This interaction between instruction and environment affects students' consciousness of the available opportunities to learn and, consequently, their own

learning and long-term outcomes. The fact that socially biased external issues monopolize students' attention in classrooms may further expand the analysis of production and reproduction in educational systems.

Expanding on this general perspective and focusing on instructional encounters, the findings concur with psychological perspectives that learning can take place only when students are actively engaged with classroom instruction. What is absent from short-term memory cannot be transferred to long-term memory (Davidson and Davidson 1980; Metzinger 1995), and students have to be engaged with instruction for learning to take place. These are essential conditions for learning. In the absence of such conditions-if students are overwhelm- ingly alienated from instruction-even an abundance of opportunities to learn may leave few traces. Furthermore, students' preoccupations with external issues may defeat their teachers' best intentions.

The conceptualization of engagement with instruction as a constant contest between out-of-school experiences and instruction provides a fresh approach to ana- lyzing instruction and the social distribution of opportunities to learn. By characterizing educational settings in terms of their ability to engage students, sociological studies can estimate the extent to which different instructional methods and strategies attract and maintain students' attention and prevent external preoccupations from invading students' consciousness. It was tentatively shown that active, group-based instructional methods and challenging strategies have a greater capacity to insulate students from external environments, whereas boring and teacher-centered methods allow for a greater diffusion between classroom tasks and non- class preoccupations, thus inhibiting the capacity of students to maximize their opportunities. Similarly, it was found that students' external activities and experiences affect their rates of engagement with instruction and that when classroom instruction is unchal- lenging and nonrelevant, external contexts determine the direction and severity of alienation. The fact that activities and moods in external contexts predict the odds of external preoccupation better than do the odds of




engagement further supports the tug-of-war, interactive battle perspective adopted here.

This study may expand extant views on the production of social inequalities at the microlevel of the classroom. Although Hispanic, African American, and at-risk students were found to be more alienated from instruction when it was teacher centered, boring, nonrelevant, and academically lax than were Asian, white, and students who were not at risk, the former did not have greater opportunities to study in laboratories, learn in small groups, or work with presentations-group activities that are more likely to keep their preoccupation with their distress- ing external environments at bay. By using teacher-centered strategies with these students, teachers allow the greater external stress of minority students to monopolize the students' attention. The unintended conse- quence is a social reproduction of inequality.

This tug-of-war perspective on engagement and alienation from instruction expands on widely used concepts in the sociology of education, namely, opportunities to learn and time on task. Previous conceptualizations of opportunities to learn (Dougherty 1996; Guiton and Oakes 1995; McDonnel 1995; McPartland and Schneider 1996) and time on task (Karweit 1983) provided explanations of social reproduction in education. Instead of viewing schools, classrooms, and curricula as black boxes, the analysis of these units in terms of learning opportunities and the investigation of their social distribution made important theo- retical breakthroughs in the sociology of education and paved the way for similar improve- ments in the practical assessment of schools and classrooms (Karweit 1 988). Such analyses have shown that variations in opportunities to learn and time on task partly account for the social distribution of achievements (Karweit 1983, 1988; Lee and Bryk 1988; Manlove and Baker 1995; Stevenson et al. 1994; Wayne and Wallberg 1980). Even black-white differences have been attributed to between-group differences in opportunities to learn (Dreeben and Barr 1987; Dreeben and Gamoran 1986; Hauser 1998).

However, despite their considerable contri- butions to the understanding of social reproduction through education, these approaches

remained distanced one step from students' consciousness of these opportunities. Consequently, they are limited in explaining how, given similar instructional inputs, different racial groups nonetheless achieve unequal outcomes. The current approach adds another important piece to this puzzle by specifying causal mechanisms to explain the production and social distribution of learning. This approach was supported in the Sloan sample, showing that when instruction is boring and nonrelevant, Hispanic, African American, and at-risk students are more alienated from instruction than are Asian, white, and not at-risk students. Equal but boring classrooms can only reproduce externally effected social inequalities.

By advancing further into the black box of the instruction-learning nexus, the findings have implications vis-a-vis students' interaction with their learning environments. In the opportunities-to-learn approach, the gap between opportunities and their realization resides pri- marily within individuals, and social inequalities in achievements are explained in terms of socially distributed opportunities (such as tracks and curricular sequences). In contrast, the findings of the present study suggest that different instructional methods and strategies constitute different "opportunities" and hence that opportunities vary in terms of their quality. Instead of the laissez-faire conception of the opportunities-to-learn approach, this study depicts these methods and strategies as active pulling or insulating forces. The gap between opportunities and their realization is narrow if instruction is engaging and relevant and if teachers pursue principles of active learning. Such gaps are greatly widened when instruction is scholastic, nonrelevant, and boring, allowing external preoccupations to consume students' attention.

Overall, the results of this study suggest that American schools are far from achieving their ideal of excellent yet common schools. Rather, they provide instruction that encourages mediocre engagement rates and almost equal rates of alienation from instruction. The diffuse walls of instruction in classrooms allow external factors to consume students' attention, culminating in significant losses of human capital, especially among minority and at-risk students.



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APPENDIX

The EMS Questionnaire

Date ____Time you were beeped am/pm Time you answered ____am/pm

As you were beepedi.. . Where were you?______ -

What was on your mind? ______________________

What was the main thing you were doing?

What else were you doing?

Was the main thing you were doing. More like work ()More like play ()Both ()Neither(

not at all very much How well were you concentrating? 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Were you living up to expectations of others? 0 1 2 3 4 S 6 7 8 9 Was it hard to concentrate? 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Did you feel self-conscious or embarrassed? 0 1 2 3 4 S 6 7 8 9 Did you feel good about yourself? 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Did you enjoy what you were doing? 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Were you living up to your expectations? 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Did you feel in control of the situation? 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Were you doing the main activity because... You wanted to ( ) You had to ( ) You had nothing else to do

Describe your mood as you were beeped: very quite some neither some quite very

Happy 0 o . 0 Sad Weak 0 o . 0 Strong Passive 0 o o 0 Active Lonely 0 o 0 0 Sociable Ashamed 0 o 0 0 Proud Involved 0 o 0 0 Detached Excited 0 o . 0 0 Bored Clear 0 o 0 0 Confused Worried 0 o o 0 Relaxed Competitive 0 o . 0 0 Cooperative

Who were you with? alone ( ) teachers ()If you were with friends, mother ( ) classmates, peers what were their names? father ( ) strangers sister(s) or brother(s) ( ) friend (s) How many?- other relatives female ()male__________

( others _ _ _ _ __ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _




APPENDIX (continued)

The EMS Questionnaire

Indicate how you felt about the main activity:

low high Challenges of the activity. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Your skills in the activity. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

not at all very much Was this activity important to you? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

How difficult did you find this activity? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Were you succeeding at what you weredoing? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Did you wish you had been doing something else? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Was this activity interesting? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

How important was it in relation to your future goals? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

If you had a choice. . .

Who would you be with?

What would you be doing?

Since you were last beepe, did you do any: (estimate to nearest quarter/hour) (Please circle O'" if you haven't done the activity.)

TV watching 0 114 1/2 314 1 1 1/4 1 12 1314 2 Hours

Chores, errands 0 1/4 1/2 3(4 1 11/4 11/2 13/4 2 Hours

Paidwork 0 1/4 1/2 3/4 1 11/4 11 13/4 2 Hours

Hangingoutwith 0 114 1/2 3/4 1 11/4 1i/2 13/4 2 Hours friends -

Homework 0 114 1/2 3/4 1 11/4 11/2 13/4 2 Hours

* has anything happened, or have you done anything which could have affected how you feel?

Any comments?



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Gad Yair, Ph.D., is Lecturer, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, School of Education, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His main fields of interest are sociology of schools, schooling, and learning; sociological theory; and stratification and inequality. He is currently studying decisive educational episodes in people's lives and is developing a "big bang" conception to expand standard "cumulative" paradigms in the study of school effects.

The author is greatly indebted to Charles Bidwell and Barbara Schneider, of the University of Chicago, for providing the data for this study and for their support and encouragement during the past five years. He also thanks Reuven Kahane and Dan McFarland for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. Data collection was supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the study was supported by a Spencer postdoctoral fellowship, administered by the National




Academy of Education (1996-97). The views expressed herein should not be attributed to the National Academy of Education or the Sloan Foundation. Address all correspondence to Dr. Yad Gair, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Department of Education, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem 91905, Israel, or by E-mail at [email protected].



Educational Battlefields in America: The Tug-of-War over Students' Engagement with Instruction

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