Conceptualising Student Engagement in Higher Education

This special issue of Student Success celebrates the work of Professor Ella Kahu and her substantial contribution to the advancement of our collective understanding of student engagement. In June 2024 Professors Karen Nelson and Chi Baik, and Dr Cat Picton sat down with Ella for a reflective conversation about her work, and additional insights in her theorising and research on student experience and engagement. In this special issue, we present the interview transcript in three parts and showcase Ella’s key publications. Understanding student engagement has become essential for retention and success in higher education. This first part of the issue brings together three influential articles that have contributed to advancing our conceptualisation of student engagement. The first article, Framing Student Engagement in Higher Education (Kahu, 2013), offers a foundational review of prevailing perspectives on student engagement and proposing a comprehensive framework to address existing definitional and conceptual gaps. Building on this foundation, the second article by Ella and Karen Nelson, Student Engagement in the Educational Interface: Understanding the Mechanisms of Student Success (Kahu & Nelson, 2018) introduces the “educational interface”—a metaphor for the space where student and institutional factors interact, affecting engagement. This article refines our understanding of engagement by identifying key psychosocial constructs that mediate this interaction. The third article, Pathways to Engagement: A Longitudinal Study of the First-Year Student Experience in the Educational Interface, a collaborative study by Ella Kahu, Karen Nelson, and Catherine Picton, (Kahu et al., 2020) employs longitudinal research to trace the first-year student experience within this educational interface, providing empirical support for the framework and underscoring the importance of self-efficacy, belonging, emotions, and wellbeing in the engagement process. Together, these articles deepen our understanding of the theoretical and practical aspects of student engagement, providing educators and policymakers with insights to shape more effective engagement strategies. Journal articles: Kahu, E. R. (2013). Framing student engagement in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, 38(5), 758-773. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2011.598505 Kahu, E. R., & Nelson, K. (2018) Student engagement in the educational interface: Understanding the mechanisms of student success. Higher Education Research & Development, 37(1), 58-71. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2017.1344197 Kahu, E. R., & Picton, C., & Nelson, K. (2020). Pathways to engagement: A longitudinal study of the first-year student experience in the educational interface. Higher Education, 79(4), 657-673. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-019-00429-w