A taxonomy of student engagement with educational software: An explorationof literate thinking with electronic text

Readers of the information age increasingly resort to "texts" that are stor ed, organized, and accessed electronically and rely on symbol systems other than alphanumeric. In schools, multimedia software and hypertexts are incr easingly common documents from which students learn. This study sought to d ocument instances of "high" literacy, literate thinking, among elementary s chool students as they worked with common computer software in the course o f their normal school day. Seven distinct forms of engagement emerged to ca tegorize students' work, and these were arranged in order of complexity: di sengagement, unsystematic engagement, frustrated engagement, structure-depe ndent engagement, self-regulated interest, critical engagement, and literat e thinking. The taxonomy of student engagement is described with examples. It clarifies other researchers' conceptualizations of high literacy and eng agement and integrates them with notions of intrinsic motivation, volition, and self-regulated learning. It also implies new ways for teachers to asse ss and scaffold student-software interactions to optimize student learning with electronic texts.