Supporting Female Students at a UAE University

University of Calgary

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Graduate Studies The Vault: Electronic Theses and Dissertations

2020-06-29

Engagement in Learning: Supporting Female

Students at a UAE University

Davison, Christina Jean

Davison, C. J. (2020). Engagement in Learning: Supporting Female Students at a UAE University

(Unpublished doctoral thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB.

http://hdl.handle.net/1880/112285

doctoral thesis

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UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY

Engagement in Learning: Supporting Female Students at a UAE University

by

Christina Jean Davison

A THESIS

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES

IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE

DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF EDUCATION

GRADUATE PROGRAM IN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH

CALGARY, ALBERTA

JUNE, 2020

© Christina Jean Davison 2020

ENGAGEMENT IN LEARNING

ii

Abstract

Student engagement is widely seen as positively influencing learning in higher education. The

purpose of this study was to investigate female Emirati student perspectives regarding factors

that affected their engagement or disengagement in learning during their undergraduate programs

at a public federal university in the United Arab Emirates. The aim of the study was to suggest

how to improve support and cultivate student engagement in learning in the specific cultural

context. The study used a qualitative approach and critical incident technique within a

constructivist-interpretive paradigm. Interviews were conducted with 21 female undergraduate

students across all years and many programs in one university. Participants were asked to

recount two critical incidents: a time they were particularly engaged in learning, and a time they

were particularly disengaged. Data was analyzed in three phases, resulting in main themes

connected to both personal and social factors, as well as substantial wish lists for future

improvement. A cross-comparison of themes suggested antecedents and impacts of the critical

incidents. A contextualized model is proposed with four environmental levers that participants

perceived might affect their engagement. The levers are: (a) accessible language, (b) positive

instructor-student relationships, (c) a balance of independence, and (d) personal development and

relevance.


iii

Acknowledgements

I want to express my deepest gratitude to Dr. Janet Groen. From day one of the first course I took

with you in this program, I felt supported to develop and succeed. I’m also grateful for all the

times that you encouraged me to dust off the metaphorical dirt and keep moving forward when I

wasn’t sure I had it in me to finish this.

I’m also very appreciative of my supervisory committee members Dr. Subrata Bhowmik and Dr.

H. Douglas Sewell, for your detailed and supportive feedback.

Thank you to Dr. Nancy Arthur for her guidance while being my initial supervisor when I started

on this journey.

I am also delighted with the support from Sally Jennings. I very much appreciate your

copyediting skills!

I’m incredibly grateful to Dr. Brad Johnson, for nudging me to start my doctoral studies and

guiding me towards challenging opportunities with the confidence I would be able to manage

them.

I’m also tremendously appreciative of Isabelle Kelly. You stated to me like it was a fact that I

could succeed in graduate school. You germinated the seed that made this degree materialize into

an achievable thing in my eyes.

I’m indebted to Dr. Brigitte Howarth for constantly encouraging or reassuring me academically

or emotionally along the way, whichever I needed.

Kind thanks to Dr. Barbara Harold and the CEI team for supporting me as I juggled completing

this while working full-time.

Huge thanks to my parents for their unwavering support. To my mom, for endlessly listening and

encouraging me. Your unshakeable belief that I can do anything I set my mind to is foundational

to my successes, and my reassurance when I hit the bumps in the road.

To my Dad & Sheila, that came to understand that asking the question “how is the doctorate

going?” was a landmine that needed to be carefully navigated. Still, you supported me to keep on

making progress no matter how small, and continually encouraged me.

To Mrs. B/Dr. B, I’ve always loved that you had the title but kept it under wraps. I can’t

overstate how impactful your role modelling and support have been to me from a very young

age. And to Mr. B, I’m looking forward to hearing that ‘whoop’ from the crowd again.

And I’d have never made it without a crowd of dear friends that have listened, wiped tears and

encouraged me along the way. A huge thanks to Kim, Becky, Liane, Tracy, Stephen, Caroline,

Sharmaine, Aysen, Kennon, Jen, Kathy, Inesia, Carina, Amy, Lynnette & Karen.


iv

Table of Contents

Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... ii

Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ iii

Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... iv

List of Tables ................................................................................................................................ vii

List of Figures .............................................................................................................................. viii

Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1

Research Setting.......................................................................................................................... 3

Research Purpose ........................................................................................................................ 3

Research Questions ..................................................................................................................... 4

Theoretical Framework ............................................................................................................... 5

Research Approach ..................................................................................................................... 5

Personal Interest in the Topic ..................................................................................................... 7

Significance of the Study ............................................................................................................ 9

Summary Overview of Dissertation............................................................................................ 9

Chapter 2: Literature Review ........................................................................................................ 11

UAE Educational Context......................................................................................................... 12

Culture and Educational Context .............................................................................................. 17

Student Engagement ................................................................................................................. 22

Student Success and Engagement as Studied in the UAE and Gulf ......................................... 39

Chapter Summary ..................................................................................................................... 50

Chapter 3: Research Methodology................................................................................................ 51

Research Paradigm.................................................................................................................... 52


v

Origins of CIT ........................................................................................................................... 54

CIT in Different Research Paradigms ....................................................................................... 55

Suitability of ECIT to This Study ............................................................................................. 58

Methods..................................................................................................................................... 61

Subjectivity Statement .............................................................................................................. 70

Trustworthiness ......................................................................................................................... 71

Ethical Considerations .............................................................................................................. 73

Limitations and Delimitations................................................................................................... 75

Chapter Summary ..................................................................................................................... 76

Chapter 4: Findings ....................................................................................................................... 78

Phase 1: Characterization of Incidents ...................................................................................... 78

Phase 2: Emergent Categories and Themes .............................................................................. 89

Phase 3: Cross-comparison of Incidents ................................................................................. 129

Chapter Summary ................................................................................................................... 135

Chapter 5: Discussion ................................................................................................................. 138

Comparison to Relevant Scholarly Literature......................................................................... 142

Supports and Barriers to Engagement: A Model .................................................................... 144

Implications of this Research .................................................................................................. 165

Suggestions for Future Research ............................................................................................ 167

Concluding Comments............................................................................................................ 168

References ................................................................................................................................... 170

Appendix 1: Informed Consent ................................................................................................... 188

Appendix 2: Interview Guides .................................................................................................... 193


vi

Interview 1 – Main Data Collection........................................................................................ 193

Interview 2 – Participant Cross-check .................................................................................... 196


vii

List of Tables

Table 1 Demographic Details of Participants ............................................................................. 79

Table 2 Included Incident Frequency by Type ........................................................................... 81

Table 3 Incident Frequency by Focus ......................................................................................... 82

Table 4 Participant Incident Focus ............................................................................................. 85

Table 5 Themes and Frequencies of Incidents ............................................................................ 90

Table 6 Wish List Items with Frequencies ............................................................................... 118


viii

List of Figures

Figure 1. Contextualized Model of Engagement Levers ............................................................ 145

ENGAGEMENT IN LEARNING 1

Chapter 1: Introduction

The concept of student engagement commands attention from educational researchers

around the world. It is widely accepted that by increasing student engagement, learning

outcomes will be improved (Trowler & Trowler, 2010). Government policymakers often

consider student engagement an indicator of institutional success (Baron & Corbin, 2012).

University administrators are enticed by the concept as it promotes student retention, progression

and completion (Leach, 2014). Faculty members use pedagogical strategies they believe will

increase it (Taylor & Parsons, 2011) and engagement levels are often used as a measure of their

teaching quality (Leach, 2014). However, as increasing numbers of students are participating in

post-secondary education, there has been a trend toward less student engagement (Baron &

Corbin, 2012).

Researchers study engagement from a variety of perspectives and disciplines and find the

definitions and models differ. It is a multidimensional construct (Trowler, 2010), sometimes

described as a meta-construct that pulls together strands of research and factors that attempt to

explain and detangle the reason for student success (Fredricks & McColskey, 2012). Research in

the field varies widely in terms of analysis from a focus on individual students, minority and

non-dominant groups, explicit student populations such as international students or first-year

students, particular classes or subjects, programs, or institutions (Trowler, 2010). The scale of the

studies ranges from small (faculty members targeting interventions in one class) to international

(international surveys of student engagement). The context for research could also be K-12

schools (Appleton et al., 2008) or universities and colleges (Kuh et al., 2005). As an example of

the breadth of perspectives, Kahu (2013a) described a broad range of viewpoints on engagement

as behavioural, psychological, socio-cultural and holistic. The behavioural view examines what


students and teachers do to improve learning and primarily teaching effectiveness. The

psychological perspective sees motivation as an antecedent to engagement which as an

individual psychological process that changes with time and in magnitude. The socio-cultural

view emphasizes the importance of context and culture to engagement. Overall, research on

engagement is “underpinned by the constructivist view that education is fundamentally about

students constructing their own knowledge” (Krause & Coates, 2008, p. 493), and engagement

research looks for ways to create and sustain an environment to support that learning.

Much of the research on student engagement in higher education has been completed in

the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom (Leach, 2016); research on student

engagement in the United Arab Emirate (UAE) is limited. The UAE educational environment,

particularly in federal universities where the students are primarily from one culture and

instructors are often from different cultures, is reported as a cultural transition for students

(Hatherley-Greene, 2012a; Mahani, 2014) and instructors (Sonleitner & Khalifa, 2005).

Students’ experience in federal UAE educational institutions is potentially quite different from

students’ experience in the settings where most of the research about engagement has been

undertaken. As such, this work examines engagement in a specific university setting in the UAE.

The context of higher education in the UAE is unusual for several reasons. The systems

have grown very quickly and very recently. The UAE is the largest importer of higher education

anywhere in the world (Ashour & Fatima, 2016). Although the reported numbers are always

changing due to openings and closings, it includes three public (federal) universities and 75

(foreign) private institutions (Ashour & Fatima, 2016). Despite quality assurance efforts,

however, the preparation of graduates has been questioned (Ashour & Fatima, 2016).


Research Setting

The site of this research was a public federal university in the UAE, which herein after I

will refer to as Public Federal University (PFU). At PFU American-accredited programs are

delivered to students that are primarily citizens of the UAE and have varied levels of academic

preparation. Most students speak Arabic as their first language, although they need to have

passed a standardized English test (roughly equivalent to International English Language Testing

System 5.5) before being accepted into an academic program of study at PFU. Many students

made use of an English language preparation program to meet the language requirement.

The faculty and administrators at the institution represented 40 nationalities (although

primarily “Western”-educated), with the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and

New Zealand being the most highly represented. Most faculty and administrators live in the

country primarily on short-term contracts. The programs are accredited by both a US body as

well as one from the UAE (Commission for Academic Accreditation). The undergraduate

programs are gender-segregated, and male and female students do not interact. There are

essentially two parallel programs, male and female, providing a separate and distinct learning

experience. Students take classes from both male and female instructors. I argue that this

combination of factors differentiates the PFU from other institutions in which engagement has

been studied.

Research Purpose

The purpose of this research was to investigate the personal and social experiences which

participants perceived to influence their engagement in learning at PFU. Ashour and Fatima

(2016) argued that in the UAE the “quality of graduates must be improved by cultivating their

interest in education” (p. 588), so understanding students’ engagement in this context is valuable.


The study endeavoured (a) to find how the students’ experience aligned with common

perspectives on engagement discussed in the literature, and (b) to identify factors particular to

the context.

Research Questions

The guiding question for the research was: What factors do female Emirati students

perceive to affect their engagement with learning in their undergraduate degree program? The

study was interested in both personal and social factors that may connect to the broader cultural

context. Sub-questions include:

• How do research participants define engagement in learning?

• What personal and social factors do students perceive to support their engagement with

learning?

• What personal and social factors do students perceive as barriers to their engagement

with learning?

• What do research participants wish for that would support them to be more engaged with

learning in the future?

Only a limited body of literature has investigated female student engagement in UAE federal

universities. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore (a) female students’ perception of

the factors they considered most crucial to helping or hindering their engagement, and (b) what

support they required. These factors were then compared to current perspectives in the literature

to illuminate factors particular to the UAE educational context.

I studied female students, as the university is gender-segregated in line with common

cultural practice, and the female undergraduate programs represent a majority of the student

population at the institution. Culturally situated research on student perspectives is needed,


otherwise researchers risk implicitly and uncritically assuming that the student perspectives in

this context are similar to others. Therefore, the goal of this study was to investigate (a) the

perspectives of female PFU students on the most supportive factors in their engagement in

learning, and (b) the factors they thought were barriers to their engagement. Understanding of the

female students’ perception of these factors and the support they wanted, is useful information

for stakeholders at PFU (including program designers, instructors, administrators and policy

makers) to ensure they are providing the experience, facilities, services, and support that female

students recommend.

Theoretical Framework

I approached this study from a constructivist, relativist stance. I was not expecting to find

a single foundational reality waiting to be discovered; rather, I assumed that individuals would

have individual representations of reality influenced by the context. I believe there are “local and

specific constructed realities” (Lincoln & Guba, 2000, p. 165) that are vital in answering the

research question. Further, I embarked on this study with an interpretivist epistemology. I

undertook this work with the belief that the participants’ observation and recollection of their

experience could provide indirect signals of important and useful information. I believed that

essential data was embedded in the recollected learning experience and viewpoint of participants,

and that I could develop new knowledge through interpretation of that information. I discuss

these underpinnings further in the methodology chapter.

Research Approach

As a researcher interested in students’ experience in a specific university, I was

concerned with the nuanced aspects that students attributed to helping or hindering them in their

post-secondary educational journey. Since the goal of the research study was to understand


students’ experience in a context-specific cultural setting, and because the variables that affect

the experience are unknown, I decided a qualitative approach was appropriate (Creswell, 2012).

This study was exploratory in nature, and the Enhanced Critical Incident Technique (ECIT)

(Butterfield et al., 2009) was selected to investigate it.

The details of ECIT will be elaborated in the methodology section but, briefly, a critical

incident study involves asking participants to identify events related to the research question that

they perceive as being critical. The reported events are then pooled and analysed, and common

factors in the events are drawn from their shared characteristics. The Critical Incident Technique

(CIT) was first described by Flanagan (1954) as a five-phase process of (a) establishing research

aims, plans and specifications, (b) collecting data, (c) analysing data, (d) interpreting, and (e)

reporting the results. This initial process was firmly placed in a positivist paradigm, where

“objective researchers” identified the critical incidents based on participants’ observable

behaviour. CIT has since been adapted by different researchers in various fields (nursing,

marketing, education, psychology) depending on their application of the method; more

commonly now, the research participants themselves identify the incidents they perceive as

critical. ECIT follows Flanagan’s initial five-phase approach and adds nine credibility checks to

increase the rigour and credibility of CIT.

In this research study, the participants were female PFU students in their undergraduate

program (as opposed to the pre-baccalaureate or master’s students) in spring 2017. I used open-

ended interview questions to probe participants’ experience of being engaged and disengaged in

learning, and then explored the personal and social factors they perceived as important. Although

the personal and social are intertwined, ensuring that factors from both angles were discussed

encouraged participants to identify what was critical in their own experience. I analyzed the


incidents, inductively created categories, grouped categories into themes and interpreted the data

to construct a new understanding of the factors considered consequential to Emirati female

students in terms of their engagement in learning. Finally, based on my results, I proposed a

model explaining contextualized factors that support student engagement within the context of

these research participants.

Personal Interest in the Topic

As a researcher, I became interested is this topic for personal reasons. Growing up in

Canada, I was a strong student in secondary school and was accepted to a prestigious university.

However, I struggled to find my place academically as an undergraduate. In classes, I did not

build meaningful relationships with my instructors or peers, was unsure of what was expected of

me and essentially never spoke in classes. I struggled to adjust to living away from home for the

first time. I was on and off academic probation, changed programs several times and barely eked

out a degree. I left university with significantly less confidence in my intelligence than I had

gone in with. Obviously, I eventually found my academic stride again, but it took well over ten

years.

I expect I would have appeared to many instructors as a disengaged, unmotivated, and

disinterested student. Perhaps in some ways I was. Since that time, however, I have worked in a

university setting for 23 years, in a variety of administrative, teaching, and learning support

roles. Since 2009, I have been living internationally and working at educational institutions in the

Gulf (Qatar and the UAE). I have worked in both teaching and support roles and am currently an

Instructional Designer at the institution where this research project takes place. I use my personal

experience of disengagement to influence the way I approach my day-to-day employed work: I

watch for students who appear disengaged and I try to question why rather than jump to the


conclusion that the student is simply unmotivated. I also used my personal experience to shape

my approach to this research. Over my 11 years working in the region, I have had many

conversations with colleagues who are concerned about low levels of student engagement, and

lament low student motivation as the reason why. While I believe that student motivation in this

context is different than what I experienced teaching in Canada, I believed coming into this

project that explaining low student engagement as solely a student motivational issue would

overly simplify the situation. In an effort to ensure the outcomes of the research would not

overlook factors that were under the control of the institution and the instructors, I wanted to

approach the topic believing that students were motivated to be in university to learn, and I

wanted to better understand aspects in the environment that would impact their engagement. As

such, this has led me to search for answers from the literature related to motivation and

engagement.

The context for this research is also important. I think there are common factors in the

way many higher educational institutions function but I believe some particular characteristics

and tensions in institutions operate in the Gulf. In comparison to where I had worked in Canada,

the educational institutions are young and subject to political influence. I have found the students

vary widely in their academic and language preparation, and the instructors come from all

corners of the world to deliver curriculum that is often imported, which can bring unique

challenges. At PFU, class sizes tend to be smaller and single gender; students are primarily from

one culture and their instructors are from another. There are no tenure-track or tenured positions,

so instructors’ relationships with the institutions can be transient due to the nature of short-term

contracts. I believe that the experience for students may at times be disjointed and confusing, as

there are many divergent expectations from instructors, peers, and families which could lead to


disengagement. Indeed, I am unsure that the current models of student engagement fully apply in

the Gulf context. In my own interaction with students, I have been unsure about what has helped

and what has hindered their engagement; this research project was in part a way to investigate

that uncertainty.

Significance of the Study

The results of this applied descriptive research study are of interest to administration,

faculty, and educational developers teaching Emirati women, as it may add insight and nuance to

the personal and social reasons why some female students engage or disengage in learning. The

results of the study may benefit future program design, support, and faculty development

initiatives in the Emirati context. The study reveals opportunities for program designers or

faculty members to consider in relation to pedagogical approaches that support engagement and

sustain interest. Most research on student engagement in higher education has taken place in the

United States, Australia and the United Kingdom (Leach, 2016), so this study adds a particular

cultural context. Engagement studies frequently examine the results of a certain course or

institutional intervention and their effect on pre-defined factors and indicators of engagement. As

a result, this study adds a distinctive angle to engagement research because it reveals the factors

that female students in a unique cultural environment generate themselves and identify as

important.

Summary Overview of Dissertation

This chapter provided an overview and a general introduction to the study. Chapter 2 will

provide a review of the relevant literature including the educational context of the UAE, culture,

engagement and disengagement, and engagement as it has been studied in the UAE. Chapter 3

will describe the origins and evolution of the Critical Incident Technique as well as the


appropriateness of the constructivist interpretation of the Enhanced Critical Incident Technique

(ECIT) for this study. The protocol for recruiting and selecting participants, data collection, and

data analysis methods used for this study will be reviewed. Chapter 4 will summarize the data

collected and the findings, and Chapter 5 will propose a model for engagement in this context

with a discussion relating the findings to the existing literature, and the implications for future

research.


Chapter 2: Literature Review

In higher education literature, the concept of student engagement has been researched for

at least thirty years (Trowler, 2010). Scholars have defined and measured student engagement in

many ways, with the nuances noted in various theoretical models (Christenson et al., 2012). As

the models were developed, it is clear that although common factors exist, there are differences

depending on context (Bernard, 2015). Most research focused on student engagement has taken

place in institutions based in the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom (Leach,

2016), which are culturally distant from the federal institution in the UAE where this research

takes place. This section reviews selected literature as a foundation for uncovering factors that

lead to engagement in higher education in the UAE, an area that is in its infancy in terms of

research.

The chapter begins with an overview of the educational context in the UAE. Following is

a summary of educational research conceptualizations of culture. The next section is a broad

review of how the education literature discusses the concept of engagement. Various

perspectives are reviewed, drawing from both school and higher education research. Also

reviewed are concepts such as (a) psychological explanations of engagement; (b) disengagement,

which has evolved into the concepts of involvement and integration; (c) institutional perspectives

formed for institutional improvement; and (d) holistic and sociocultural models. Finally, I review

the research on student engagement in the context of the UAE and Gulf higher educational

institutions. In this review I provide a perspective from which to investigate the construct of the

engagement experience of Emirati female students in higher education in the UAE.


UAE Educational Context

The UAE was formed in 1971, combining seven autonomous emirates under one

government (Al-Suwaidi, 2011). It is an emerging country that, because of the wealth generated

from oil and gas, has especial advantages in the world. It is unusual in that the “UAE leadership

has preserved the society’s heritage and Islamic character, grounding new trends and modernity

in tradition and avoiding a complete rupture with the past” (Al-Suwaidi, 2011, p. 40). Although

many developing countries struggle economically and are not always able to invest in education,

the UAE has both the financial resources and the support of the local government to build

education with the goal of enhancing the population’s development and global competitiveness

(Kirk, 2010). The UAE government’s Vision 2021 document describes its commitment to

building a sustainable, competitive, knowledge-based economy and first-rate educational

systems (UAE Prime Minister's Office, n.d.).

Citizenship in the UAE is conferred primarily on the nationality of birth parents. Emiratis

have been minorities in their country since its inception. In 1975, Emiratis made up one-third of

the population of 558,000, but by 2005, they made up only about 20% of the population of 4.1

million people (Al-Suwaidi, 2011). Specifically in the emirate of Dubai, in 2017 only 9% of the

population were Emiratis (Dubai Statistics Center, 2019). The population growth has been driven

mainly by the economic needs of the oil and gas industry, as well as being a regional hub for

trade and tourism. Large numbers of expatriates coming to work in the UAE, rather than the

more ordinary demographic forces of fertility and mortality, have increased the population

quickly. In 2005, Emiratis represented only 8.4% of the workforce, of which 22% were female

(Al-Suwaidi, 2011). In response to concerns that Emiratis were not in control of the future of the

country because of the workforce imbalance, formal programs of “Emiratization” have been


developed to encourage the education and hiring of Emirati citizens in both private and public

positions (Kirk, 2010), mainly in middle to upper management positions (Gallant & Pounder,

2008). Many Emiratis decide to work in public-sector jobs, citing more flexible hours and

holidays as well as higher wages and favourable working conditions with which the private

sector cannot compete, despite government regulations to employ a percentage of Emiratis (Al-

Suwaidi, 2011).

The UAE is considered a “consumer” of education because they have imported most of

their education programs and staff. Kirk (2010) stated, the UAE “has a history of buying the

educational models and expertise it requires, as opposed to the lengthier, but possibly better-

suited process of building an indigenous education system from the ground up” (p. 4). In this

study, the term “traditional” university will be used to characterize institutions that have built

education systems from the ground up over long periods of time and have not imported their

models.

The first university in the UAE opened in 1977 (Kirk, 2010). Since then, 75 private

institutions have opened, often connected international universities (Ashour & Fatima, 2016).

Private institutions follow a wide variety of different models, outlined by Miller-Idriss and

Hanauer (2011). These include replica campuses of foreign universities (e.g.: NYU Abu Dhabi),

branch campuses of established universities (e.g.: University of Wollongong-Dubai), and foreign

style institutions that are modeled on foreign systems but not affiliated with any (e.g.: American

University in Dubai). Private institutions tend to draw primarily children of expatriates working

in the UAE, as well as Emirati students. Alongside these various types of private institutions,

three federal (but foreign accredited) institutions have also developed: United Arab Emirates


University, Higher Colleges of Technology, and Zayed University. The federal institutions were

originally modeled on foreign systems and tend to target only Emirati students.

The language of instruction in public primary and secondary schools attended by UAE

citizens is Arabic, although students may also attend private schools where English is the

medium of instruction. In tertiary education, it is either English (in the private universities) or a

combination of English and Arabic (in the federal institutions). The government pays the tuition

and material costs for Emirati students for higher education, and federal institutions have

admission policies that admit most willing nationals who have completed secondary school.

They are accepted into pre-baccalaureate foundation programs or directly into their program of

choice, based on their results on standardized tests.

The public primary and secondary schools, primarily staffed by expatriates from other

Arab countries, are characterized as being teacher-centred and religiously oriented (Dahl, 2010),

using antiquated curriculum that emphasizes rote-learning; they use standardized testing as the

main form of assessment (Freimuth, 2014). There are accusations that grade inflation in

secondary school may be as high as 50% and it is suspected to be tied to the level of influence of

a student’s family (Freimuth, 2014). There is a large-scale primary and secondary school reform

program in place, but many PFU students at the time of this study would not have benefitted

from it (Freimuth, 2014). The tertiary institutions have pre-baccalaureate programs that many

public-school students complete before entering academic programs of study. These programs

teach English and math and are often the first place where public school students encounter

learner-centred pedagogy. Hatherley-Greene (2012a) characterized the combination of the new

language and new teaching style by a foreigner encountered in tertiary education as a “cultural


border crossing” for students, drawing attention to the extra tension experienced by Emirati

students transitioning into tertiary education.

Alongside the free public system, many Emirati students attend private primary and

secondary schools following American, British, Indian or one of many other different curricula

and languages that cater to the broader expatriate population (Godwin, 2006). These schools

charge full fees and tend to mirror the norms of their home country, with no gender segregation,

different teaching methods and curriculum that does not necessarily include Arabic. It is

commonly perceived that private schools provide a higher quality education than the public

system (Goodwin, 2006).

Female enrolment in UAE universities has exceeded male enrolment since 1981

(Findlow, 2013), and two-thirds of Emirati university graduates are women (Dubai Women

Establishment, 2018). However, the motivation for women to study in the UAE is quite different

from what might be expected: “An appreciation for the education of females in the UAE has

neither in the past, nor in the present, solely been for purposes of employment” (Kemp, 2013, p.

268). Women’s gender roles in the family are often traditional in nature, and the purpose of

women participating in education is reported as improving marital status and preparing them to

nurture children (Kemp, 2013). Engin and McKeown (2012) reported about female students:

It is evident that students . . . are mostly extrinsically motivated, not so much by external

rewards such as job prospects and a good salary, but by others and society. University

education is seen as a goal in itself, as opposed to the Western notion of university being

a steppingstone to a career and promotion. (p. 9) [emphasis added]

If women do plan to work, traditional culture dictates that they are often encouraged to choose

careers based on what would best benefit the family rather than the individual’s interests (Gallant


& Pounder, 2008). However, UAE students have reported that their own personal interest was

rated as having the most influence in their choice of major, although when asked to choose

another person who had a strong influence, they reported family members (Gallacher et al.,

2010). More recent research by Engin and McKeown (2017) proposed that it is a combination of

personal and professional goals as well as family and social expectations that guide the decision

to study. It is clear that different factors related to culture affect women’s reasons for pursuing

education.

In summary, the context of the UAE is unusual in several ways. The country and

educational systems have developed very quickly due to the revenues of the oil and gas industry,

although strong ties to the traditional culture still exist. Emiratis are a minority in their country

because so many expatriates are hired to make up the skilled and unskilled labour forces.

Emiratis comprise a small portion of the workforce, although Emiratization efforts are being

made to increase these numbers. The country has chosen to import tertiary educational systems

to help prepare and educate an Emirati workforce, but it is a challenging transition for students.

The system is growing, with three federal institutions working under foreign accreditation

standards and 75 private institutions. Although public primary and secondary education is mainly

in Arabic, the tertiary institutions are primarily in English, requiring various bridging programs

to prepare students for academic programs. Public primary and secondary schools have been

criticized for being outdated and teacher-centric, but they are being overhauled. Private schools

from around the world mean students can take a variety of curricula for a fee. Women outnumber

men in higher education in the country, although their motivation for pursuing higher education

degrees is more often a goal in itself rather than a vehicle towards a career. With so many

contextual and cultural factors in the UAE being unlike the countries where most educational


engagement research has occurred, it is important to undertake research that includes UAE

student perceptions.

Culture and Educational Context

Culture is a sociological concept and understood in adult education as the “shared values,

attitudes, beliefs, behaviours, and language use within a social group” (Guy, 1999, p. 7). A

person’s culture may affect the way in which they interpret and experience the world around

them, although cultural groups are not homogeneous (Guo & Jamal, 2007). In a discussion on

culture, and especially cultural diversity, it is important to recognize that individuals who are part

of a cultural group may or may not have the same experience as the generalizations made about

that group (Guy, 1999). A considerable amount of study in cross-cultural communication is

based on the work of Hofstede, who described cultural group characteristics in terms of falling

on linear continuums (e.g., individualism vs. collectivism, or low- and high-power distance).

This typology encourages stereotyping and may not reflect the reality of culture change based on

context (Ryan, 2011). It is important to recognize that individuals may not have the

characteristics that commonly explain cultural groups. Although race or ethnicity may be

recognizable symbols of a culture, they include intersections with class and gender and many

other factors in a cultural group that vastly change a person’s experience in the group (Guo &

Jamal, 2007). The boundaries of cultural groups and practices are fluid in nature.

Culture is an important consideration in educational environments because “learner

engagement is, at least in part, a feature of cultural identity” (Closson, 2013, p. 64). Lin (2006)

drew attention to the idea that behaviours appropriate in one culture may be interpreted

differently in another culture. Lin (2006) stated:


For instance, standing or speaking up for oneself is considered authentic in one culture,

but it may be seen as egotistical or shameful in another. Holding back one’s own thoughts

to avoid temporary conflict or for the benefit of a community is considered gracious and

altruistic in one culture, but cowardly or even deceitful in another. (p. 64)

It is important to note that the way that a university functions with its academic expectations,

social rules, and norms is a culture in itself. Cultural practices shape teaching and learning

principles and are not a universal reality (Ryan, 2011).

The concept of culture in educational literature reflects its history. Terms such as

multicultural, culturally inclusive, intercultural, and cross-cultural are used in discussions related

to cultural contexts. Each of these terms will be analyzed to frame this research through the

consistent use of terms as a common language for the purpose of a critique.

Multicultural

A multicultural environment implies that there are multiple and distinct groups, each

represented by its values, attitudes, and beliefs, gathered together in one place. The term

“multicultural education” in the literature developed from the Black civil rights movement in the

United States and the advocacy of equal representation of the rights of Black students in the

school system (Vang, 2010). Around the same time, the French and First Nations peoples in

Canada also participated in a call for equality (Banks, 2009). Multicultural education is based on

alleviating the disadvantages experienced by minority students (Verma, 2007) and on giving all

students an equal opportunity to succeed in educational endeavours.

Inclusive

The term “inclusive” in relation to education is primarily used in the literature to mean

the acceptance of all students into educational settings regardless of physical, cognitive, or


sensory needs (Jha, 2007). From this perspective, educational institutions need to make changes

to adapt to students, rather than requiring students to modify their behaviour. Although the focus

of inclusive education has been on students with disabilities, there is also mention of factors such

as gender, ethnicity, culture, and religion. In a similar vein, culturally inclusive pedagogy is a

concept based on the idea that the educational institution should adapt to culturally diverse

student needs, rather than focusing on the student making the adaptation (Blasco, 2015).

Although the most effective type of adaptation for different cultures may not be clear, the

primary point in culturally inclusive pedagogy is that the responsibility to adapt does not solely

rest on the students. The history of multicultural and inclusive education reflects the roots of

much of the literature on culture in student engagement research which will be reviewed in the

next section.

Intercultural and cross-cultural

The term “intercultural” is used throughout the literature in discussion of culture and is

linked with other terms that include: intercultural understanding, intercultural sensitivity,

intercultural competence, intercultural communication (Perry & Southwell, 2011), and/or

intercultural learning (Bennett, 2009). “Intercultural” means the interaction between people from

different cultures, which is different from “multicultural,” which means the recognition of

multiple cultures (Banks, 2009). The term “cross-cultural” describes comparisons between

cultures (Mertens, 2007). Nevertheless, the literature has used the term “cross-cultural”

interchangeably with “intercultural,” so this research will use the term “intercultural.”

Usually the term intercultural would refer to people from many different cultures

interacting, such as a classroom with students from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds.

However, the context at PFU is slightly different in that the students are primarily from one


culture and the majority of instructors and administrators are from multiple other cultures. While

this is not necessarily the way that the term is traditionally used, I will use it to refer to the

context in which instructors and students need to interact. Intercultural competence is an

umbrella term, describing “effective and appropriate behaviour and communication in

intercultural situations” (Deardorff, 2011, p. 66).

Intercultural understanding or intercultural sensitivity is considered a precursor to

intercultural competence and is connected to the cognitive and affective domains (Perry &

Southwell, 2011). To achieve intercultural understanding or sensitivity, Perry and Southwell

(2011) explained that a person needs to understand their own culture as well as other cultures.

Likewise, affectively, a person needs to have a positive attitude toward other cultures. Positive

attitudes include: empathy, curiosity, and respect. For understanding or sensitivity to become

competence, the cognitive and affective parts of intercultural understanding are the foundation

for additional behavioural skills that facilitate effective communication between people in

different cultural contexts (Perry & Southwell, 2011). “Cultural humility” is another term used in

counselling psychology, which is demonstrated when a counsellor is able to maintain an attitude

that “expresses respect and a lack of superiority even when cultural differences threaten to

weaken” the relationship with the client (Hook et al., 2013, p. 354). The term is based on the idea

that intercultural competence infers there is a finite amount of knowledge to be learned to

become “competent,” while “cultural humility” implies that a person never presumes they are

competent, based on knowledge or previous experience working with a particular cultural group.

Rather a culturally humble person approaches individuals with curiosity about their

intersectionality of identities (Hook et al., 2013). Achieving a culturally humble stance is of


utmost importance for instructors working in the UAE setting, as they are the power figures in

the intercultural classrooms and have a profound effect on the classroom environment.

Context Summary

In this section, several terms used in the literature on culture in higher education have

been reviewed: culture, multicultural, culturally inclusive, intercultural, and cross-cultural. The

terms “intercultural competence” or “cultural humility” are the closest to an umbrella term to

encapsulate the ability to communicate and behave appropriately and effectively when people

from different cultures attempt to work together.

This research is situated in an environment where most students are of one nationality,

and although generalizations must be avoided, they are presumably from a similar cultural

background. Instructors and administrators come from a wide variety of nationalities and

cultures but the common factor is that their education has occurred primarily in Western

institutions. These groups then come together in an American style educational institution, which

expects multiple cultures to work together. If female students do or do not experience

intercultural competence or cultural humility from faculty, administrators, and the institution, it

could have a major effect on their sense of belonging in the institution and their engagement in

the educational experience.

In the following section, definitions and approaches to the study of student engagement

will be investigated. However, it is important to be cognizant that these ideas have been

developed in primarily in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom: environments

that are entrenched in multicultural (focused on the presence and recognition of multiple

cultures) or inclusive (acceptance of all students into educational settings regardless of physical,

cognitive or sensory needs), which is different than the environment in this study, where students


tend to be from one culture and instructors from many others. The culture of the traditional

institutions that have developed the engagement construct presumably reflect the dominant

cultures’ norms in their countries. In the case of the UAE, the government has largely imported

expatriates to teach in foreign-style educational institutions. The institutions, therefore, reflect

the dominant cultural norms of foreign countries, which creates tension for both instructors and

students in this unusual context.

Student Engagement

Engagement is “ widely recognized as an important influence on achievement and

learning in higher education” (Kahu, 2013b, p. 758), so there have been a variety of different

approaches taken to researching it. I will summarize a variety of perspectives to account for the

breadth and disparity in conceptualizations. First, I will outline the critical relationship between

engagement and motivation and use that as a background to understanding the definition I have

selected for this study. Next, I will review the psychological perspective, where the root concepts

of behavioral, affective, and cognitive engagement are delineated. Then I will characterize what I

have called the disengagement and institutional perspectives, which represent the evolution of

engagement research within higher educational contexts, driven by institutional interests in

student retention and broad efforts to understand how to support student success. Penultimately I

will examine some student-focused conceptions of engagement, and finally I will summarize the

holistic/sociocultural conceptions that attempt to draw together all of these veins of research as

they related to specific contexts.

Relationship between engagement and motivation

Although there is widespread agreement that engagement is vital to learning, there is

“debate over the exact nature of the construct” (Kahu, 2013a, p. 758). The consensus among


scholars, because of their many backgrounds, may not even be possible but it is important that

authors discuss their definitions. As such, I will review some perspectives and select a position

for this study.

There is an unresolved tension in the field on whether the definition of engagement

should be broad, or if it should be narrower (Eccles & Wang, 2012). When the definition is

broad, Eccles and Wang (2012) argued that it is more useful for policy making, and will increase

the overlap with other theories. However, more narrow definitions make the concept easier to

measure, and to explain clearer relationships to existing theories related to learning and teaching

(Eccles & Wang, 2012). Many researchers agree that engagement is a multidimensional

construct made up of the interrelation of observable behaviours, internal cognition, and

emotions. However, it becomes complicated as these three areas are differentiated into scales or

categorizations for measurement, and often something that is “one author’s conceptualization of

the components of behavioural engagement is another’s operationalization of cognitive

engagement” (Christenson et al., 2012, p. 814).

An example of the broad/narrow tension becomes clear when authors discuss their

conception of the relationship between engagement and motivation. First, in some literature the

terms are used synonymously, without delineating similarities or differences (Finn & Zimmer,

2012). For those with narrower definitions, that see engagement and motivation as distinct but

related fields, the difference is based on the focus. Motivation is the private and unobservable

psychological process that is the precursor to the “publicly observable behaviour that is

engagement” (Reeve, 2012, p. 151). Alternatively, engagement is the action or the observable

behaviour, internal cognition, and emotional expression of motivation. Motivational research

tends to be concerned with the individual underlying psychological processes that direct


behaviour, and “attribute[s] its source to inner drives to meet underlying psychological needs”

(Finn & Zimmer, 2012, p. 105); engagement is concerned with the daily experiences and

interactions and “tends to be thought of in terms of action, or the behavioural, emotional and

cognitive manifestations of motivation” (Fredricks & McColskey, 2012, p. 765). In the

engagement research with narrower definitions it is common to argue that “engagement and

motivation are separate, but related constructs, wherein motivation is necessary but not sufficient

for engagement” (Reschly & Christenson, 2012, p. 14).

In broader definitions, the relationship between engagement and motivation is less

defined. One of the most common definitions in higher education comes from Kuh, Kinzie,

Buckley, Bridges, and Hayek (2007), and describes what the institution and the student do. For

students, this is “the amount of time and effort students put into their studies and other

educationally purposeful activities” (p. 44); for the institution, it is how it “deploys its resources

and organizes the curriculum, other learning opportunities, and support services to induce

students to participate in activities that lead to the experiences and desired outcomes such as

persistence, satisfaction, learning, and graduation” (p. 44). In a similar vein, Krause and Coates

(2008) stated, “[Engagement] is a broad phenomenon that includes academic as well as selected

non-academic and social aspects of the student experience” (p. 493). The Kuh et al. (2007)

definition is an example of a broad take, where they situated that student engagement is “at the

intersection of student behaviors and institutional conditions” (p. 11). Motivation as a concept is

firmly subsumed as part of student behaviours, as well as other student factors like study habits,

peer involvement, and interaction with faculty. However, institutional conditions like academic

support, first year experiences, campus environment, and teaching and learning approaches all

play a part in engagement as well. Broad definitions run the risk of becoming “everything and


anything that is related to students’ and teachers’ functioning in the school context” (Eccles &

Wang, 2012, p. 138) but also allows investigations that give both the institution and the student

equal footing and responsibility for engagement.

Trowler (2015) noted that the commonly used phrase “engagement of students” ascribes

the responsibility of engagement to the institution and denies student agency. However, the

common phrase “engagement by students” seems to credit the responsibility wholly to the

student. Engagement is a multidimensional construct describing the interaction between the

individual and their environment (Fredricks et al., 2004), with some responsibility for

engagement lying with both.

Connected to this is another key idea in engagement, that it cannot be separated from the

context (Lawson & Lawson, 2013). As stated by Reeve (2012), a student may have the

motivation to learn outside the classroom but in the classroom, they are engulfed in a social

context where the teacher and the learning environment either support or frustrate their

motivation. In this situation, “Every student’s classroom engagement is invariably a joint product

of his or her motivation and classroom supports versus thwarts” (p. 152).

A further critical assumption is that student engagement is malleable (Lawson & Lawson,

2013), varies in intensity, and is responsive to the environment. This means that engagement can

be improved by making modifications, for example, to teaching approaches or other targeted

interventions (Fredricks et al., 2004). Another supposition is that engagement is a direct pathway

to learning and that by improving engagement, learning will also be improved (Lawson &

Lawson, 2013). However, an alternative stream of literature questions whether engagement

strategies “are effective in producing learning gain, and critiquing their behavioural effects on

students” (Macfarlane & Tomlinson, 2017, p. 1). It is generally held that a lot can be done to


improve engagement (Kahu, 2013a), and that by improving engagement, it leads to improved

student outcomes.

On the final pages of an 800-page volume on student engagement research in schools,

Christenson, Reschly, and Wylie (2012) defined engagement as follows:

Student engagement refers to the student’s active participation in academic and co-

curricular or school-related activities, and commitment to educational goals and learning.

Engaged students find learning meaningful and are invested in their learning and future.

It is a multidimensional construct that consists of behavioural (including academic),

cognitive, and affective subtypes. Student engagement drives learning; requires energy

and effort; is affected by multiple contextual influences; and can be achieved for all

learners. (pp. 816-817)

This definition is based on a broad set of K-12 research after summarizing a large amount of

engagement related research. This is a commonly used definition of engagement; however I have

chosen not to use it for this project. I made this decision first, because it is based in K-12

research. There is a contextual difference between higher education and K-12 because primary

and secondary school attendance is usually required and is not voluntary for students like higher

education attendance is. Second, the contextual influences of where the engagement happens are

underplayed in this definition, and for an applied project like this one where I am interested in

understanding the student experience in a specific context, it is important that the institutional

role is given more prominence. Third, I find that excluding motivation from the definition of

engagement side-steps an important concept. The definition I have selected is one of the broader

definitions, arrived at in a higher education context through a principle-based concept analysis,

Bernard (2015) defined student engagement as:


A dynamic process marked by a positive behavioural, cognitive, and affective state

exhibited in the pursuit of deep learning. This process is bound by contextual

preconditions of self-investment, motivation, and a valuing of learning. Outcomes of

student engagement include satisfaction, a sense of well-being, and personal

development. The iterative experience of engagement occurs within a given educational

framework influenced by a broader sociocultural context. (p. 118)

This definition, particularly because of the way it was developed, reflects the broad range of

research domains from which engagement studies draw, and is centered in higher education. This

broad definition (over a narrow one) is useful because an outcome of this research is to inform

practice. It includes the concept of motivation within it and defines it clearly as a precursor to

engagement. It also acknowledges that experiences of engagement happen within specific

educational frameworks and sociocultural contexts. Given that this study is seeking to

understand the engagement experiences of Emirati women within a federal university, this seems

to be a solid fit and as such is the definition used in this study.

Psychological perspectives

One of the earlier oft-cited works on the concept of engagement is by Fredricks,

Blumenfeld, and Paris (2004). Drawing together the multiple aspects that make up school

engagement they discuss three dimensions of engagement drawn from previous research

traditions: behavioural, affective or emotional, and cognitive (Fredricks et al., 2004). From the

behavioural perspective, engagement is usually demonstrated through observable conduct and

participation, for example, students complying with behavioural expectations and school norms

like attending class, obeying school rules, spending time on appropriate tasks, not being

disruptive, participating in academic or extracurricular activities and avoiding negative


behaviour such as skipping classes or acting out. The perspective of affective or emotional

engagement is concerned with students’ affective reactions to the school environment (teachers,

classmates, academics, and the institution). This could be based on the individual, for example, a

student feeling interested or bored by a particular activity, or it could be institutional in attention,

in relation to student feelings of belonging and relatedness to their school, teachers, and peers

(Lawson & Lawson, 2013). The third aspect, cognitive engagement, is concerned with students’

internal cognition regarding learning, their investing in their own learning, showing self-

regulation, being strategic in their approach to learning and possibly going beyond basic

expectations. As a general summary, the behavioural dimension is concerned primarily with

what students and institutions “do” in the learning environment; the cognitive aspect is

concerned with what students “think” about their learning; and the affective is linked to the

effects of what students “feel” about their learning. Each of these components has a rich research

history, although they are often studied independently and quantitatively (Harris, 2008).

The concept of effort is seen as having differing qualities in the behavioral and cognitive

perspectives, ranging from getting the work done (behavioural) to a full mastery of material

(cognitive). The quality that makes engagement valuable is that it draws together these individual

bodies of literature in an attempt to explain the facilitators of student success.

Other researchers have taken this base of behavioural, emotional, and cognitive aspects of

engagement, and offered further important constructs. Appleton, Christenson, Kim, and Reschly

(2006) proposed a taxonomy of four subtypes and indicators for engagement: academic (e.g.,

time on task, credits earned towards graduation), behavioural (e.g., attendance, voluntary

classroom participation, extracurricular participation), cognitive (e.g., self-regulation, personal

goals and autonomy), and psychological (e.g., feelings of belonging, relationships with peers and


teachers). They cautioned that most research has dealt only with the academic and behavioural

subtypes, and that finding a single indicator for each subtype is highly unlikely. Reeve and Tseng

(2011) discussed agentic engagement, which is “students’ constructive contribution to the flow

of the instruction they receive” (p. 258). Agentic engagement might be demonstrated by a variety

of methods including a student asking a question, offering an idea, stating a preference,

communicating a need or interest, or making their own contribution. Agentic engagement

emphasizes the importance of students’ proactive and intentional contributions to classroom

activities and how that engagement influences the teacher’s behaviour.

Disengagement perspectives

In higher education research, a different research thread has influenced the field of

engagement, examining what it deemed as the ultimate form of disengagement: dropping out of

university. The concepts of integration and involvement were first developed by Tinto (1975)

and Astin (1984, 1993, 1996) by studying students who withdrew from university. These ideas

have been the foundation of much of the current work in engagement in higher education.

Integration.

Integration is explained as the “extent to which students come to share the attitudes and

beliefs of their peers and faculty, and the extent to which students adhere to the structural rules

and requirements of the institution—the institutional culture” (Wolf-Wendel et al., 2009, p. 414).

This idea was first developed by Tinto (1975) to explain the process of a student voluntarily

withdrawing from an institution (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005). Tinto (1975) applied Durkheim's

theory of suicide to student dropouts. Individuals who are not sufficiently integrated in society

are at risk of suicide, and the parallel is that students not sufficiently integrated in universities are

at risk of dropping out. The central proposition of the model is the stronger a student’s academic


and social integration in the institution, the more committed they are to the institution, and the

more dedicated they are to graduating (Habley et al., 2012). In the revised version of his theory,

Tinto (1988) used the work of the Dutch anthropologist Arnold Van Gennep, who studied the

rites of passage in tribal societies as a lens through which to consider the longitudinal process of

student persistence. Tinto (1988) hypothesized that there is a conceptual similarity between a

person becoming a member of a wider community through tribal rites of passage, and a student

integrating into an institution, persisting, and graduating. These stages are separation, transition,

and incorporation. In the separation stage, a student entering college needs to, at some level,

disassociate with their prior community, namely high school and where they live, which may be

more or less challenging depending on the community's expectations of them. Students who do

not move to attend university and continue in their pre-university home and/or peer circles may

run the risk of not fully integrating with university life, particularly if their community is not

supportive. The second stage is aptly named transition. Students have separated from their past

circles, but they have “yet to acquire the norms and patterns of behaviour appropriate to

integration in the new communities of the college” (p. 444). The way individual students respond

to the pressures of transition are related to personality, personal coping strategies, educational

commitment and individual goals. The third stage is integration, when “the person now faces the

problem of finding and adapting norms appropriate to the new college setting and establishing

competent membership in the social and intellectual communities” (p. 446). Students who do not

work through all these stages are unlikely to feel a sense of belonging to the university and are

considered more likely to leave.

Tinto's (1975) theory has “near paradigmatic status in research on college student

departure” (Braxton, Sullivan, & Johnson, 1997, p. 108), but it is not without critique (Melguizo,


2011). One common critique of Tinto's theory is that it is not appropriate for the study of

minority students (Melguizo, 2011; Tierney 1992). Tierney (1992) commented: the idea that a

student must adapt and assimilate into the institution’s value structure is problematic, as it is a

misinterpretation of the cultural definition of a ritual and rite of passage. In traditional cultures, a

person does not choose to participate in a rite of passage; designed into the ritual is a pathway to

success for the preservation and maintenance of the culture (1992). He stated, Tinto “has

assumed that student departure is a universal concept rather than a cultural category developed

by the society that utilizes the ritual” (p. 610). Guiffrida (2006) suggested that identification of

cultural norms and motivational orientations of diverse groups of students is important and

recommends investigating relationships between these variables and student achievement and

persistence. This investigation would lead to a more nuanced understanding of the experience of

students from different cultural backgrounds. Melguizo (2011) questioned that Tinto’s theory

neglects the influence of factors external to the institution, is limited by loose definitions of the

constructs and lacks a reliable and valid instrument to measure academic and social integration.

Further, it has been unable to connect how social and academic integration affect persistence.

Braxton, Hirschy, and McClendon (2004) found there is only partial empirical support for

propositions in Tinto’s theory. They suggested the propositions that have empirical support

should be used as a base to revise it. Melguizo (2011) suggested that researchers should look

beyond Tinto’s theory to more inter-disciplinary approaches and that the dominance of

quantitative studies has been detrimental to the development of the understanding of persistence

and success in the field.


Involvement.

Alexander Astin (1984) first proposed a theory of involvement, which he described

simply as “the amount of physical and psychological energy that the student devotes to the

academic experience” (p. 518). The theory grew, like Tinto’s (1975), from examining students

who dropped out of university and discovering the factors that differentiated them from the

students who persisted. He found a relationship between almost all the factors of successful

outcomes and the idea of involvement. The theory examines the individual and the academic,

out-of-class, and extracurricular activities they decide to become involved in (Wolf-Wendel et

al., 2009). Through extensive longitudinal studies in the United States, measuring 57 forms of

involvement, the most powerful types of involvement for persistence were: academic

involvement, involvement with faculty, and involvement with student peer groups, with peer

group involvement being the strongest source of influence (Astin, 1996).

The work of Astin (1984) on involvement and Tinto (1975) on integration are

foundational to the field of engagement. Astin’s recognition that the student’s level of

involvement in and out of class and extracurricular activities as contributing to many positive

outcomes is important in understanding engagement. Tinto’s work with integration was one of

the first to recognize that students may voluntarily drop out because of issues influenced by the

institution, rather than individual characteristics such as financial status or academic ability. Both

researchers paved the way to view engagement as a multidimensional construct, encompassing

both the students and the institution; their ideas are evident in many consequent models.

Institutional perspectives

The multidimensional angle of engagement research indicates how the student and the

institution interact. This perspective on engagement proposed by Kuh, Kinzie, Buckley, Bridges,


and Hayek (2007) is one of the most pervasive interpretations of engagement in the higher

education field. Kuh et al. (2007) described a broad model of what matters to student success,

with engagement at the centre. In this view, engagement is the interaction between student

behaviour and institutional conditions. The student behaviours include study habits, the amount

of time interacting meaningfully with faculty members, peer involvement, the amount of time

spent on educationally purposeful tasks, and student motivation. Institutional conditions include

factors such as the teaching and learning approaches used, academic support, the campus

environment, and the first-year experience. Students’ pre-college characteristics, which include

factors such as enrolment choices, academic preparation, family and peer support, motivation to

learn, and the students’ demographic characteristics, also play a role. Engagement represents

what Kuh et al. (2007) claimed are the areas that universities can do something about to support

(or deter) students’ eventual success in achieving grades, graduation, employment, or learning

outcomes.

The concept of student engagement has gained traction and visibility through the US-

based National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE). Hundreds of institutions participate in

the survey annually as a way to measure what students do with their time while attending

university and what they gain from the experience (NSSE, n.d.), and is often used as a proxy

measure for university quality (Zepke, 2015a). The NSSE was based on research into best

practices in university education and developed by a team of researchers interested in student

success including George Kuh, Alexander Astin, Arthur Chickering, and others (Wolf-Wendel et

al., 2009). The survey comprises five benchmarks of best practice: (a) academic challenge, (b)

active and collaborative learning, (c) student-faculty interaction, (d) enriching educational

experiences, and (e) a supportive campus environment (Baron & Corbin, 2012). The NSSE has


been criticized regarding its usefulness for research because it was developed for institutional

improvement and comparison (Kahu, 2013). Indeed, Kahu stated, “Blending institutional

practices with student behaviour has resulted in a lack of clear distinction between the factors

that influence engagement, the measurement of engagement itself, and the consequences of

engagement” (p. 760). Zepke (2015b) warned that the results of the NSSE give an undue

indication of certainty and rationality to administrators on how to improve engagement; this can

lead to cultures of compliance with faculty. From the institutional perspective, the deliberate

focus on elements that the institution can control and change means that other important

variables (e.g., student expectations or emotions) are not given due weight. Although this

perspective is useful in institutional improvement initiatives, it is limiting in leading to a full

understanding the complete puzzle of student engagement.

Individual student-focused perspectives

Bryson and Hand (2007) suggested that engagement should be viewed as a continuum

from disengaged to engaged. On that continuum, they proposed a number of areas when a

student may experience different levels: on a task, in a class, in a program, or at a university. In

their case study of students in the UK, they found what they described as some disturbing

experiences of student alienation in their university experience. Students were viewing university

as a means to an end: to get a degree to get a job. This view led to their engagement being

primarily transactional and focused on achieving grades for tasks, courses, and programs, driving

their interest. What they did find from student reports is that when a teacher, or a team of

teachers, spent time developing relationships and trust, it could affect the students’ level of

engagement across tasks, courses, programs and their general experience of higher education.

They concluded by acknowledging that there may be institutional barriers affecting student


engagement that lie outside an individual faculty member’s circle of influence. They reminded

faculty that:

Sometimes our best and well-meant intentions are destroyed by not giving sufficient

attention to the issues that matter to students, e.g., poor relationships, or too much

prioritizing on aspects such as learning outcomes, which is key to quality audit but trivial

to the students. (Bryson & Hand, 2007, p. 360)

This perspective emphasizes the importance of engagement as a multifaceted concept, and that

by affecting levels of engagement at one level (e.g., a course), it can improve engagement in

other levels (e.g., a program) as well.

Leach and Zepke (2011) offered a conceptual organizer for student engagement, based on

a literature review and their own study of 72 students in relation to their perceptions of their

engagement in learning. They identified six perspectives on engagement evident in:

• Motivation and agency (engaged students are intrinsically motivated)

• Transactional engagement with teachers

• Transactional engagement with other students

• Institutional support (university environment is conducive to learning)

• Active citizenship (environment for challenging social beliefs and practices)

• Non-institutional support (support from family and friends to engage)

They argued that their organizer “offers a useful way of thinking about the complexities of

student engagement and that it could be used to inform, evaluate, and improve student

engagement in individual institutions” (p. 202). This perspective also offers active citizenship,

absent from most other models. The data from their student interviews was used to illustrate the

importance of interactions in engagement and divided into two threads: (a) engagement with


teachers, and (b) engagement with other students. This organizer suggested the importance of the

student’s context in the non-institutional supports category, but is weak in explaining how the

factors interact, and acknowledging the broader cultural or contextual factors outside the

classroom.

Another important contribution is from Solomonides, Reid, and Petocz (2012), with their

relational model of student engagement. Working from a phenomenographic study of university

students studying design, they placed the students’ “sense of self” at the centre of the model with

a “sense of being” and a “sense of transformation.” The sense of being acknowledges how the

students think of themselves (their confidence, imagination, happiness); the sense of

transformation is the means by which the self is growing (learning, understanding, and thinking).

The outer components consist of a sense of being a professional, sense of discipline, knowledge,

and a sense of creative engagement. This model offers another viewpoint for engagement

research to consider the emotional state of students in a deeper way than the previously

mentioned affective research in the psychological perspective. As shown by the use of “sense

of,” it encourages growth as the primary purpose of education and uses engagement of the whole

person as the key to success. Using this model for the design of programs would deliberately

foster the transformation and development of students’ selves in a discipline, beyond just

mastering the material. Of all of the perspectives presented, this one in particular seems most

beneficial in professional programs.

Holistic/sociocultural perspectives

Various authors called for more holistic views on student engagement. Given the wide

background and multifaceted nature of the concept, an integrated perspective would be helpful to


guide further research. In this area, authors are attempting to understand engagement as it fits

into what happens in the classroom, the institution, and the wider society and culture.

Lawson and Lawson (2013) viewed engagement as “the conceptual glue that connects

student agency (including students’ prior knowledge, experience, and interest at school, home,

and in the community) and its ecological influences (peers, family, and community) to the

organizational structures and cultures of school” (p. 433). In their view, engagement should not

be seen as something that a student has more or less of, but rather that engagement will vary in

type, form and degree across a number of settings and researchers should focus on finding the

objects (technology tools, peers, teachers, social settings) that drive students’ engagement

choices. This aligns with Astin’s (1984, 1993, 1996) theory of involvement but the authors do

not refer to the work, possibly because Astin’s work was with university students, and Lawson

and Lawson’s work comes from the school (K-12) perspective. Lawson and Lawson (2013)

encouraged engagement research to be “more nuanced and less formulaic” (p. 459) and to

consider the context and settings (classroom, school, or community) of the work.

Kahu’s (2012) holistic view brings together these threads of research and attempts to

detangle the precursors and consequences of engagement. The model has the individual student

at the centre, with their affect, cognition, and behaviour considered, drawing on Fredricks et al.’s

(2004) work. Two categories of precursors to engagement are presented, with two categories of

consequences of engagement. The first precursor is the psychosocial influences with the

relationship between the student (with their internal motivation, skills, identity, and self-efficacy)

and the university (with their faculty, staff, workloads and support structures) at the centre. The

second precursor is the structural influences of the student (with their background, family, and

support) and the university (with its culture, policies, curriculum, and assessment). These two


precursors interrelate to feed or impede the engagement of students. Next, two consequences of

engagement, proximal and distal, are explained. The proximal consequences of engagement are

academic (e.g., learning and achievement) and social (a sense of satisfaction or well-being). The

distal consequences are broader categorizations of academic work such as retention, success in

work, lifelong learning and social effects (personal growth and citizenship). The concept is

overlaid on the particular political and social environment. The attempt to show both antecedents

and consequences of engagement in one model, and to include the socio-cultural influences is a

powerful contribution to engagement research. The model states that the engagement

consequences are not the direct result of any one particular precursor; rather, it is a complex

interplay of factors that lead to consequences. The model includes elements from most

previously mentioned authors working in the field of engagement, and although it does not

necessarily explain the full picture of engagement causally, it offers great value in how to

detangle many aspects of the situation.

Student engagement summary

In this section, first I summarized various narrow and broad definitions of engagement

and discussed the tension between engagement and motivation as a research focus. Following

this, I selected the Bernard (2015) definition of engagement, which I used for the study. Several

theories of student engagement were examined, including the psychological perspective with the

behavioural, cognitive, and emotional components and the disengagement perspectives of Astin

and Tinto, providing a foundation for engagement research with the concepts of involvement and

integration. The institutional perspective, known to academics through the NSSE, deals with the

interaction between the student and the institution, with a sharp focus on what institutions can do

to improve student outcomes. Further, individual student-focused perspectives add the concept


that engagement is multifaceted and varies widely for individual students; by improving or

impeding engagement in one area (with a teacher, course or other students) it can improve or

impede engagement in other areas (a program). The holistic models add the concept that context

and setting, like the classroom, institution, or community can affect student engagement, and

research needs to be situated and less standardized. Kahu’s (2012) model attempted to position

the student at the centre and detangle the precursors and consequences of engagement.

Student engagement in UAE higher education is a small but growing field of research.

Next, studies that consider factors for student success and engagement in the UAE or other Gulf

countries will be reviewed.

Student Success and Engagement as Studied in the UAE and Gulf

The UAE and Gulf is a unique context for higher education so this section examines the

various ways in which student engagement has been studied in the region, from both teacher and

student perspectives. From the teaching perspective, investigations report on the challenges for

teachers (Lemke-Westcott & Johnson, 2013; Prowse & Goddard, 2010; Sonleitner & Khalifa,

2005), using different pedagogical approaches like active learning (Aboudan, 2011; Crabtree,

2010), deep learning (Burt, 2004; Russell, 2004), and the use of constructivism (Dahl, 2010).

The student perspective has been examined in regard to student satisfaction (Fernandes et al.,

2013; Wilkins et al., 2012), student perceptions of effective instructors (Saafin, 2008), academic

and social integration (Halawah, 2006), motivation (Aboudan, 2011; Engin & McKeown, 2012,

2017), transitions from high school (Hatherley-Greene, 2012a), and the experience of first-

generation women (Mahani, 2014). First, the teacher perspectives will be reviewed, followed by

the student perspectives.


Teacher’s perspectives

Teaching in the Gulf context has its own challenges, as described by Smith (2006):

“Assumptions about university education are shaken and teachers find themselves having to

return to and question the fundamentals of their teaching, learning, and assessment practices” (p.

111). Instructors with experience teaching international students on traditional campuses often

find the international teaching situation quite different (Dunn & Wallace, 2006). Experience with

teaching in a traditional campus program, therefore, may not be sufficient for a faculty member

to be immediately effective at an international campus (Leask, 2008). Based on surveys and

focus groups of instructors who had recently started teaching in the UAE, Sonleitner and Khalifa

(2005) found that instructors encountered challenges, many related to cultural differences. They

noted differences in Gulf countries’ classroom culture (reluctance to speak individually in

classroom discussions), classroom behaviour (students coming and going from the classroom,

signals of understanding or misunderstanding), student preparation (coming to class with

readings not completed) and language proficiency, which in some cases led to instructor

frustration (Sonleitner & Khalifa, 2005). The instructors reported struggling to be creative in

modifying their teaching and learning strategies to meet the needs of the students. In terms of

transition, it has also been found that students studying at UAE federal institutions may

experience a form of culture shock as they adapt to the culture of the institution, even though

they are living in their home country (Hatherley-Greene, 2012a). Instructors and students both

need to be prepared for this transition.

Building on the theme of how instructors modify teaching and learning strategies, various

studies have discussed using different pedagogical approaches to engage UAE students. In one

study supporting the merits of active learning, information was collected based on feedback from


students and instructors. Four broad recommendations were made as follows: “including content

(examples or illustrations) that connects with Emiratis’ everyday lives; offering opportunities for

Emirati students to be actively involved in lessons; rewarding student involvement efforts and

engagement; and giving students greater responsibility in planning and executing the learning

process” (Aboudan, 2011, p. 133). In a comparative case study of the delivery of a business

program at a home campus in Canada and a branch campus in Qatar (another Gulf country),

considerable pedagogical modifications were observed in the branch campus setting. Instructors

modified their approach to time orientation, level of guidance given to students, male or female

interactions in group work, and discussion of controversial topics (Prowse & Goddard, 2010).

Concerns have been noted that the change from the teacher-centred pedagogies and

passive learning experienced by Emirati students in primary and secondary school can be

problematic when adopting active, deep learning and constructivist pedagogies. Russell (2004)

questioned the commonly mentioned assumption that students in the UAE prefer passive

learning activities based on memorization and rote learning, and found that students expressed an

interest in approaches that involved understanding, critical assessment, and relating information

to existing knowledge. Burt (2004) used a critical case study to investigate the experience of

three students in their first two courses at Zayed University. The transition from passive to active

learning strategies is initially quite problematic for students, but the author argues that through

multiple scaffolded exposures, the motivation and performance of the students exceeded their

high school achievements. In the same theme of scaffolded approaches, Lemke-Westcott and

Johnson (2013) showed a gap between the learning styles of Middle Eastern students and

Canadian faculty at the University of Calgary-Qatar. This gap affected both students’ learning

and teachers’ effectiveness. They recommended that faculty needed to understand that first-year


students in transnational universities may be completely unprepared for reflective and abstract

ways of thinking and that students need to be taught these skills throughout the program.

Crabtree (2010) reflected on a culturally responsive teaching practice in the UAE in the

development of an assignment when students did research on family members. By allowing

students to explore issues connected to their identity, family history, and culture, she found the

work of some students was highly reflective, allowing conversations that might otherwise have

been contentious if presented in a teacher-centred effort (effects of globalization and the reliance

of the UAE on expatriate labour, for example) and in many cases had students performing

beyond their usual ability particularly in composition, originality, and thoroughness.

Although various studies investigate ways in which instructors can engage students in

this context, one author in particular cautions against the use of constructivist pedagogies in the

UAE. In her book Failure to Thrive in Constructivism, Dahl (2010) offered a widespread critique

of why it is problematic to adopt constructivist principles in the UAE. One chapter describes the

hidden dynamics that may affect Emirati learners in Western classrooms. Dahl noted literacy

problems, family and tribal structures, and students’ primary and secondary school experiences

with pedagogical structures based on religious teachings that are not questioned, where

knowledge is absolute, and the teacher is the transmitter of that knowledge. She stated, “Learners

are compelled to cross a huge cultural, cognitive and epistemological gap before they can

function comfortably in a Western-style classroom” (Dahl, 2010, p. 53). As one of the several

examples of this divide, she discussed the challenge for students not only to master English, but

also the system of English writing. In Arabic, writing is right-to-left, and sentences are structured

very differently from English. For example, she reports, in Arabic sometimes spaces are placed

in the middle of words; it is common and reasonable to include many ideas in one sentence, or


not use a sentence structure at all. The logical style of presenting arguments in a linear manner,

preferred in Western curricula, is not used. Flourishes or inclusion of unrelated ideas and facts is

both commonplace and correct in Arabic. Considering the example of the correct way to

structure an argument and how it is tied to culture and language shows the divide that students

must overcome to meet the expectations of diverse instructors.

The literature on teacher perspectives of ways to improve student success and

engagement in the UAE and other Gulf countries spans a variety of approaches. Numerous issues

arise in this intercultural classroom space and instructors adopt a variety of tactics to meet the

challenge. Various pedagogical approaches and modifications are tried, with a theme emerging

of the need to take into account not only the students’ culture, but also the teacher-centred

primary and secondary schools from which they come. Scaffolding students’ exposure to learner-

centred approaches is vital.

Student perspectives

Student perspectives have been investigated in a variety of ways in the UAE. It is also

important to note that student perspectives are likely to vary within the UAE based on the type of

institution being a branch campus, foreign affiliate, or federal. Below is a review of studies

which investigate student satisfaction, student perception of effective instructors, academic and

social integration, motivation, transition from high school, and the experience of first-generation

women.

In a survey, Wilkins, Balakrishnan, and Huisman (2012) explored the perception of

students studying at UAE branch campuses. They questioned student satisfaction across a

number of variables, including “programme effectiveness, quality of lecturers and teaching,

student learning, assessment and feedback, learning resources, use of technology, facilities and


social life” (p. 543). The research team initially intended to send the survey out cross-

institutionally, but none of the institutions approached by the team agreed to participate. An

instructor of one course in a branch campus in the Emirate of Dubai agreed to distribute the

survey to their students, who then shared the survey through their Facebook pages with other

students they knew were also studying at a branch campus in the UAE. The students who

completed the survey were from various nationalities representative of branch campus

institutions. Results indicated that students were largely satisfied. It is interesting to note for this

study that the UAE students were the least satisfied group (although they were only 13% of the

respondents and the difference between groups was not significant). The categories that were

found to have the most negative responses related to students perceiving they were able to have

contact with faculty when needed; they received detailed, helpful feedback; faculty were

sympathetic if they had problems that affected their schoolwork; and that faculty did not involve

them more than their high school teachers did. Some negative responses occurred in terms of the

availability of leisure, social activities, and clubs or societies. It is important to emphasize that

the students were largely very satisfied with their educational experiences, and to balance it with

the rather unconventional sample of students.

Similarly, Fernandes, Ross, and Meraj (2013) collected data from students graduating

from a British university branch campus in the UAE regarding their satisfaction with their

program and university services and facilities. Although the sample is not broken down by

nationality, the response rate was 58% of 322 students. The largest finding of this study was that

teaching quality is of the utmost importance as “a significant level of satisfaction with overall

program quality can be attributed to whether students believe their teachers were good at

explaining things, were enthusiastic, made the subject interesting and were intellectually


stimulating” (p. 623). They were able to show that students are more likely to be loyal to a

program and recommend it to others if they are satisfied. Based on this argument, they concluded

that the university needs to invest in high-quality full-time teaching faculty in order to maintain

high student satisfaction levels, although it is common practice for contracts to be short-term.

This study, combined with Wilkins et al. (2012) showed that students’ perception of faculty

being available and helpful is essential to students’ satisfaction with their learning experience.

Saafin (2008) investigated what UAE students perceive as qualities of effective

instructors. In a qualitative study with freshman students in English at the private University of

Sharjah, the researcher found a variety of characteristics and practices mentioned by students. In

order of frequency, they were: treats students with respect, is flexible and willing to compromise,

is willing to help, is friendly, has a sense of humour, helps students understand, gives students

the chance to speak and ask questions, is dedicated, is fair, is a role model, is knowledgeable, is

patient, and smiles. This list is interesting because there is more emphasis on the interpersonal

skills of teachers, and students said they were more important than teachers’ instructional

strategies. The results are mirrored in a study by Raymond (2008), who investigated both faculty

and student perceptions of effective and ineffective teachers in an undisclosed UAE university.

Findings from that study dictated that personality elements were more important than ability. The

characteristics of effective teachers in Raymond’s (2008) study were: “is respectful, makes

classes interesting, is fair in evaluating, cares about students’ success, shows a love for their

subject, is friendly, encourages questions and discussion, is always well prepared and organized,

and makes difficult subjects easy to learn” (p. 2). This adds an interesting cultural aspect to the

discussion, suggesting that the teacher’s personal qualities are particularly important to UAE

students, although it is unknown how many of the students are Emirati.


Engin and McKeown (2012) studied motivation and UAE students. In qualitative focus

groups of 12 students studying at a federal English-medium university in the UAE, they

investigated how students understood motivation, goals, success and failure, and how it affected

their experience at university. Although there were reports of intrinsic motivational reasons to

attend university (e.g., loving learning, education is important to me), most of the responses

reflected extrinsic motivations (to get a job, to be the first girl in my family, to please my

parents, help build the country, because of my family). The authors suggested that what is

particular about the students in this study is the importance of “family and society as a

motivator” (p. 8). Some motivators are in line with the political narrative of the importance of

Emiratization, which appears to be a driving factor in attending university.

In a detailed qualitative case study dissertation, Mahani (2014) undertook in-depth semi-

structured interviews with six first-generation Emirati post-secondary students studying at the

federal Higher College of Technology to understand the academic, social, familial, and financial

experiences of first-generation Emirati women students. The findings of the study give the most

comprehensive view of the female students’ experiences found in this review of the literature and

show the complexity of the student experience. In terms of the familial experiences, a

multifaceted picture is painted in which students receive verbal encouragement from parents,

although do not get much actual guidance. Conflicting expectations from family were also found,

when parents encouraged students to succeed in their studies but required them to conform to

familial or cultural norms that interfered with studying. For example, some students reported not

being allowed by their family to stay on campus after class to complete work on group projects

with peers. Meeting fellow students without a chaperone was an academic expectation, but it

conflicted with family cultural values. Other students were clearly told by their parents that


although they could pursue a degree, they would not be allowed to work in the future. This again

is an example of an academic program assumption (that a degree is sought in preparation for

work) that conflicted with family cultural values. In terms of financial experiences, this study

revealed a new finding particular to this population. Unlike most first-generation students

reported on in the literature on student success, these students did not experience financial

difficulties and were not motivated to complete their studies to support their families financially.

The UAE pays tuition and material costs for Emirati students, so this study points to different

motivations and experiences for this population when compared with first-generation students

elsewhere. With regard to the academic experience of students, most of the students reported

entering the institution feeling unprepared because of their low level of English and were

confused and challenged. This situation is interesting, because these students were enrolled in a

program designed to teach English and academic skills before starting academic programs, yet

they still felt unprepared. Students also said they felt very uncomfortable approaching instructors

for support or assistance. One student reported that she had never had the courage to approach an

instructor for individual help in her academic career (including elementary school). This finding

points to a serious issue in student-faculty contact and implies that the gap between students and

instructors can be very wide, with implications for aspects of engagement. Unsurprisingly,

students surrounded by Western expatriates in teaching and administrative positions reported that

they felt socially foreign in the institution and were not sure they belonged. It was clearly a very

different experience when compared to their high schools, where the teachers and administrators

were primarily Arab expatriates. In terms of peer-socialization, students reported difficulty

making friends and felt lonely and isolated. Most students said they did not attend events or

participate in extra-curricular activities. The social findings have important implications when


related to the literature (Astin, 1984; Tinto, 1975, 1988) which emphasized the importance of

social integration in student persistence.

In another dissertation, Hatherley-Green (2012a), studied the experience of male students

starting in the bridge program at the federal Higher Colleges of Technology in Fujarah, one of

the seven emirates that make up the UAE. A combination of research methods was employed,

including surveys, observations, case studies, interviews, journals, student narratives, and focus

groups. By these methods, he explained the varied “transition experiences as young male Emirati

school-leavers move from their pre-dominantly Arabic life-world associated with their families

and schooling to the predominantly Western culture found in higher education” (p. ii). In looking

at the characteristics that the young men bring to the educational environment through surveys,

he measured “mental toughness” and found students lacking in characteristics such as resilience,

challenge, persistence, commitment, and confidence. These characteristics are tied to self-esteem

and lead to students’ perception that they are likely to fail. Combined with this finding,

Hatherley-Green found that parents were often ambiguous about their son’s education and

encouraged them rather to leave school and seek full-time employment in the public sector.

Without family encouragement, a successful transition into the institution became particularly

challenging. In looking at the influence of faculty, Hatherley-Green found the most positive

student evaluation of instructors came from a group termed “warm demanders.” A warm

demander made a point of first developing a rapport with students by showing interest and a

willingness to understand their lives and experiences outside school. Only after that rapport had

been established would the instructor set and hold high levels of expectation for academic

achievement and classroom behaviour. Through focus groups with students, the transition

experience was clarified as one that requires several integration processes: “after the initial


cultural, linguistic, and cognitive shock experienced in the first few weeks . . . the students ‘got

used to college’ due to bonding within the class, bonding with a teacher, and bonding with the

new college culture” (p. 287). The students who were not able to make this transition were the

most likely to leave the institution. The highest levels of attrition in this institution were from the

lowest level English classes. The researcher suggests that the reason is that the “border crossing

experience” between the culture of their home lives and the culture of the college is such a wide

gap that they were unable to cope. This study examined the experiences of men but the

researcher interviewed the program chairs of the female programs in the same institution to see if

they believed that the female students experienced similar issues. The reports stated that the

issues were not as pronounced in the female program, perhaps because of different societal

expectations placed on women or their different educational experiences.

In general, it appears that students in university educational settings in the UAE are

largely satisfied with their experience, although the wide variety of models of universities in the

UAE can make it challenging to disentangle factors that relate to female Emirati students. Areas

for improvement involved being able to make a connection with their instructors (both having

the courage to, and making sure faculty were available) and having faculty be helpful,

enthusiastic, and understand problems they had outside school. The personal characteristics of

instructors were particularly important in student perception of effective instructors, with

interpersonal qualities outweighing instructional techniques. Academic integration, faculty

concern, and informal faculty relationships were connected to students’ intellectual and personal

development. UAE students were found to be extrinsically motivated, and a primary motivator

was family and society. The tensions which students must navigate between their culture and the


expectations of educational institutions are shown, and the necessary social transitions for

students to feel a sense of belonging in institutions were particularly challenging.

Chapter Summary

The literature review used various constructs and prior research as a basis to explore the

research questions of the current study. First, I examined the education context of the UAE. Then

I investigated the construct of culture, paying attention to the terminology (multicultural,

culturally inclusive, cross-cultural and intercultural) and choosing the term intercultural to

describe the context. Third, I conducted a survey of the definition of student engagement in the

literature, and the development of various perspectives on the concept. I selected the Bernard

(2015) definition, seeing engagement as a positive behavioural, cognitive, and affective state that

is iterative, and increasing the relevance of the educational context. I then reviewed a broad

selection of literature on engagement from different perspectives: psychological, disengagement,

institutional, student-focused and holistic. Finally, a review of research studies related to student

success and engagement in the UAE and other Gulf countries revealed teacher and student

perspectives and indicated tensions both academic and social. At this point, no studies have

investigated the personal and social factors that Emirati female students perceive are the most

supportive or inhibiting of their engagement in their program of study, so it will be a valuable

addition to the literature and stakeholders at PFU.


Chapter 3: Research Methodology

The purpose of this research was to investigate the personal and social factors that female

students thought influenced their engagement with learning at PFU. I explored the way

participants defined engagement to see how it aligned with common perspectives in the literature

and looked for factors particular to participants’ experience. I investigated what participants said

were the factors that (a) were the most supportive of engagement in learning their program of

study, and (b) were barriers to their engagement. The post-secondary program studied is operated

in and has a primary audience of one culture, but is accredited by systems from another culture,

and the teachers and administration are from many cultures. The research setting was distinct

from many other studies in the area of student engagement by virtue of its physical and cultural

location. Usually, in the setting of other engagement studies the majority of primary stakeholders

(students, teachers, administration, and accreditation bodies) all operate in one dominant culture.

The literature investigating engagement in the federal UAE university setting is limited;

therefore, the aim of this study was to explore (a) female students’ perception of the factors they

considered most crucial to helping or hindering their engagement in learning, and (b) what

supports they wished they had. The results will be shared with stakeholders including program

designers, instructors, administrators, and policy makers in the context, and can be used to

influence future changes in practice.

The guiding question for the research was: What factors do female Emirati students

perceive to affect their engagement with learning in their undergraduate degree program? The

study addressed both personal and social factors that may be connected to the broader cultural

context. Sub-questions include:

• How do research participants define engagement in learning?


• What personal and social factors do students perceive to support their engagement with

learning?

• What personal and social factors do students perceive as barriers to their engagement

with learning?

• What do research participants wish for that would support them to be more engaged with

learning in the future?

In this chapter, I explore the research paradigm and methodology chosen to answer these

research questions and provide a rationale for the decision. The methodology will be described

and reviewed, followed by a discussion of its suitability and use in an educational environment.

Finally, I explain the implementation of the methods employed in this study. I describe the

research population and the recruitment procedures and criteria for inclusion or exclusion in the

study. The data collection methods will be discussed, as well as the data analysis procedures. The

chapter concludes with a discussion of trustworthiness, a subjectivity statement, ethical

considerations and the limitations and delimitations of the study.

Research Paradigm

The paradigm beliefs held by a researcher determine the methodological approach and

decisions taken in their study. Therefore, it is important for educational researchers to respond to

questions about ontology and epistemology (Cousin, 2009). Waring (2017) discussed ontology

(the nature of reality) through a useful continuum with realism on one side, and constructivism

on the other. Realism means that there is one singular and objective reality that exists even if it is

not perceived by any individuals; the constructivist side acknowledges multiple realities, and

they are constructed by individuals. Epistemology is concerned with the question of how realities

can be either captured or known. Waring (2017) advanced the continuum metaphor with the


continuum of epistemology being positivism (on the same side as realism) and interpretivism

(aligned with constructivism). Positivist epistemology argues that knowledge of the world is

“findable” by objective observation or measurement, whereas interpretivism believes that

“accounts and observations of the world provide indirect indications of phenomena, and thus

knowledge is developed through a process of interpretation” (p. 16). For the purpose of this

research study, I hold a constructivist, relativist ontology and believe there are “local and specific

constructed realities” (Lincoln & Guba, 2000, p. 165) which are pivotal in answering the

research question. Further, I approach this study with an interpretivist epistemology.

This constructivist, interpretivist philosophical underpinning leads to the research

approach. Mackenzie (2006) stated, “The most common definitions suggest that methodology is

the overall approach to research linked to the paradigm or theoretical framework while the

method refers to systematic modes, procedures or tools used for collection and analysis of data”

(p. 4). A qualitative strategy, with an “emphasis on experience, understanding, and meaning-

making” (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016, p. 21) is aligned with the interpretivist standpoint and well

suited to the research question on student perceptions and experiences. Qualitative research

strategies tend to have similar major characteristics, including “a focus on understanding the

meaning of experience, the researcher is the primary instrument in data collection and analysis,

the process is inductive, and rich description characterizes the end product” (Merriam & Tisdell,

2016, p. 21).

The research question examines participants’ perceptions in a certain context to which

previous engagement research may or may not apply. It is important, therefore, that the research

approach emphasizes the participants’ perceptions. Further, the context is a second-language,

intercultural environment in which it is important to ensure that the participants are given the


opportunity to explain their understanding of the research topic and what they find important in

their own words, without being prompted with factors perceived to be important by others. For

these reasons, I have selected a qualitative Enhanced Critical Incident Technique (ECIT) as the

approach for this study, linked to the constructivist, interpretivist paradigm.

Origins of CIT

Kain (2004) stated that a disadvantage of using CIT is “the technique has not broken into

the ranks of high-status research practices; it is unfamiliar to most readers, except in industrial

and organizational psychology” (p. 78). With this disadvantage in mind, I assume the reader may

not be familiar with ECIT and as such I will give an overview of the CIT, its origins, its use in

different paradigms before discussing the suitability of it for this study.

A critical incident study involves identifying incidents related to a topic of interest which

are perceived as helping or hindering for some reason. These incidents are then analyzed, and

commonalities of the incidents are reported to reveal what impedes or supports the topic. The

studies vary quite widely in their subject of interest, how incidents are identified and by whom,

their adherence to the same process, and their philosophical underpinnings. In the seminal piece

first describing critical incident technique, Flanagan (1954) explained CIT as:

A set of procedures for collecting direct observations of human behaviour in such a way

as to facilitate their potential usefulness in solving practical problems and developing

broad psychological principles. The critical incident technique outlines procedures for

collecting observed incidents having special significance and meeting systematically

defined criteria. (p. 327)

Further, Flanagan (1954) set out five major steps in a CIT study as:

1. Decide on the general aims of the study


2. Make plans and set specifications

3. Collect data

4. Analyze data

5. Interpret data and report results. (pp. 336-346)

Flanagan noted that the steps are not rigid. “Rather it should be thought of as a flexible set of

principles which must be modified and adapted to meet the specific situation at hand” (p. 335).

Perhaps at least partially because of the name and the term “technique,” CIT is

confusingly sometimes used as a methodology, sometimes as a data collection method, and

sometimes as an undeclared mix somewhere in between, leaving the reader confused as to which

parts of Flanagan’s approach have been followed. Researchers will often diverge entirely from

Flanagan’s five-step process but will claim to have used CIT because they have structured the

data collection interview or survey around participants describing critical incidents. For example,

they might use critical incidents as a data collection method, but then use grounded theory to

guide the data analysis (Shapira-Lishchinsky, 2011).

CIT in Different Research Paradigms

CIT is used in a number of research paradigms, so for clarity I will follow the thread of

how the chosen constructivist, interpretivist paradigm affects the use. Chell (2004b) noted,

“[CIT] nicely cuts across the (simplistic) notion that quantitative methods assume positivism

while qualitative methods make non-positivistic assumptions. The fact is that CIT may be used

within either paradigm!” (p. 51). CIT has undeniably positivistic roots, where Flanagan was

aiming to attain scientific credibility by having well-trained, objective researcher observer and

identify the factors that were critical for success in areas like combat leadership, why pilots

experienced vertigo, and characteristics essential for job success (Flanagan, 1954). The results of


a CIT study would provide “a relatively objective and factual definition” (p. 328) of particular

human behaviours. These statements reflected the positivist assumption of a singular objective

reality, which would be knowable through direct, objective observation. Chell (2004) remarked

that Flanagan made further assumptions: (a) that the purpose of an activity could be determined;

(b) that standards for effective or ineffective performance could be identified; and (c) that

observers would be able to recognize incidents when this standard was achieved. Considering

CIT from a constructivist perspective, these assumptions need to be questioned.

Many key shifts have occurred since Flanagan’s original procedures, and CIT is now

used quite frequently in an interpretive paradigm in a wide variety of fields. From this

perspective, it became more common for participants to self-report what is critical to them in an

experience, rather than to have the identification done by an observer. This shift underpinned

using CIT to study an ever-widening variety of psychological constructs and experiences.

Butterfield, Borgen, Amundson, and Maglio (2005) reported that the focus of CIT studies is very

adaptable, and:

can range from studying effective and ineffective ways of doing something, to looking at

helping and hindering factors, collecting functional or behavioural descriptions of events

or problems, examining successes and failures, or determining characteristics that are

critical to important aspects of an activity or event. (p. 476)

Butterfield et al. (2009) developed an enhanced version of CIT called Enhanced Critical Incident

Technique (ECIT) after having noted that trustworthiness needed to be established particularly

with the focus on participant perceptions of an experience rather than direct observation. They

suggested nine credibility checks set out as additions to the final step of the CIT interpreting and

reporting. Their suggested credibility checks were: (a) audio-recording interviews, (b) interview


fidelity, (c) independent extraction of critical incidents and wish list items, (d) exhaustiveness,

(e) participation rates, (f) placing incidents into categories by an independent judge, (g) cross-

checking by participants, (h) expert opinions, and (i) theoretical agreement.

CIT has been broadly applied to different fields including counselling psychology

(Woolsey, 1986), nursing (Sharoff, 2008), organizational psychology (Chell, 2004b), and

customer service industries (Gremler, 2004). Examples of CIT being used in education occur in

many cases attempting to understand the perceptions and experiences of students, which parallels

the aims of this study. CIT has been used to understand the subjective cross-cultural transition

experiences of post-secondary students travelling abroad for coursework; for example, attending

courses in the Semester at Sea project (Pedersen, 1995), and Canadian students attending a

seminar in Vietnam (Arthur, 2001). CIT has been used to explain student perceptions of

excellence in teaching (Khandelwal, 2009; Voss, 2009), meaningful interactions between

students and faculty (Schwartz & Holloway, 2014), and interprofessional interactions and skills

in physiotherapy education clinical sites (Robson & Kitchen, 2007). Other studies have used CIT

to understand student satisfaction with higher educational experiences (Douglas et al., 2015;

Menges & Kulieke, 1984), alignment of values of faculty, administration, and students (Telford

& Masson, 2005), as an alternative method to collect student evaluations of teaching (Douglas et

al., 2009), and what helps or hinders hopefulness for students who have experienced barriers (B.

Smith et al., 2014). International students have also been the focus of CIT studies in education,

including cross-cultural transitions of international students in Canada (Moores & Popadiuk,

2011), and how international students use online information resources (Hughes, 2012). Further,

ethical dilemmas for teachers have been investigated (Shapira-Lishchinsky, 2011). Critical


incidents have also been used in education as reflective tools for examining formative learning

and classroom experiences of students and teachers (Brookfield, 1998).

Suitability of ECIT to This Study

This study used ECIT in a constructivist theoretical framework, following the five-step

approach outlined by Flanagan, and the enhanced credibility checks proposed by Butterfield

(2005). Further, I used the data analysis procedures for critical incident studies described by

Holloway and Schwartz (2014).

From a relativist and subjectivist stance, I do not claim to be an objective observer and

analyst in search of a singular truth about an experience, but rather an “author of a reconstruction

of meaning” (Mills et al., 2008, p. 26). Viewing ECIT from this perspective, as in this study, the

authority for describing the purpose of an activity and the decision as to what is effective or

ineffective performance is removed from the observer (as Flanagan suggested) to the research

participant. In essence, “critical incidents are not observed, because viewing from the outside

cannot reveal the criticalness of an incident. Critical incidents are created by the person to whom

they are critical” (Kain, 2004, p. 81). Research participants commonly explain their experience

of incidents through surveys or interviews. The research participants’ identification and self-

reported examples of meaningful experiences and events in their own engagement in learning

were at the core of my study. Given the language challenges and cultural setting for this research,

this approach allowed the participants’ voice to be heard.

ECIT was suitable for this study for various reasons. Engagement experiences vary in

type, form, and degree across settings (Lawson & Lawson, 2013) and in order to understand the

factors that drive students’ engagement choices, the ECIT approach honoured the student

perception of which experiences were meaningful for them to engage in learning (Holloway &


Schwartz, 2014). ECIT directly aligned with the constructivist theoretical framework of this

study because in ECIT, “the researcher began with the assumption that there is a discrete

knowledge or experience possessed by these individuals that can be elicited through self-

reflection of successful strategies used” (Butterfield et al., 2009, p. 268). I have assumed that (a)

participants are the best source to identify a critical incident for them; and (b) there are

commonalities in the experience of being engaged or disengaged in learning by Emirati female

students. I believed I could understand the perspectives of these students by eliciting thick

descriptions of incidents they selected as meaningful and connected to their engagement and

disengagement in learning and having them describe which aspects they found important. ECIT

is exploratory and is a systematic approach for understanding the subjective experience of the

participants through their contextual examples.

Turning briefly to research design, using the focused interview as the data collection

approach allowed for a purposeful discussion about the issues under investigation. The

participant maintained control because they chose which incidents were discussed rather than

having the researcher supply them, and the perspective of the participant was at the centre of the

investigation (Chell, 2004a). This control was particularly important in this intercultural setting,

to ensure the point of view of the participant was elicited. By way of the data analysis

procedures, the commonalities of meanings of the factors and experiences that participants

valued were inductively analysed to build a new understanding of what helped and hindered in

their experience. ECIT using self-reporting to offer a powerful way for participants to guide the

interview and uncover their perspectives about what was helpful and hindering in their

engagement in learning and consequently build a new understanding.


ECIT presents some disadvantages to the study as well. Because it can be somewhat

challenging to place firmly in either the qualitative or quantitative tradition (Chell, 2004b), many

CIT studies report descriptive statistics such as percentages or counts to summarize the number

of incidents relating to a category (Andersson & Nilsson, 1964; Arthur, 2001). Kain (2004)

noted, however, that in regard to CIT:

The persuasiveness of such research is not based on inferential statistics . . . the

persuasiveness of critical incident research arises from a careful explanation of the

process followed and attention to rich descriptive detail, providing the reader with a basis

to judge the applicability of the research. (p. 78)

It was important, therefore, to be mindful in the reporting of results to describe in detail the

procedures used to reach the results so the reader can make their own judgment. There was a risk

in relying on the memories of participants, which may be distorted (Kain, 2004). However, by

ensuring that adequate details of the incident were collected (e.g., the incident, its importance to

the participant, and an example), this risk was mitigated. The process of coding and analyzing

data can be very time-consuming (Chell, 2004), and many credibility checks were needed

(Butterfield et al., 2009). Finally, confidentiality issues might arise if participants named other

people in their description of incidents, or used terms like “mother” or “father” (Britten et al.,

2012) so a strict procedure was used to de-identify the transcripts. Although there are

disadvantages to the approach, the issues were managed.

In summary, CIT has been shown to be a flexible approach that has expanded in use in

qualitative research. CIT, despite not having “broken into the ranks of high-status research

practices” (Kain 2004, p. 78), has a history of use in education and cultural research. Using a

constructivist approach, I was not searching for a singular truth about the participants’


experience. The participants, in turn, were given full authority to describe the purpose and

importance of an activity and why they ascribed meaning to it. The nine credibility checks of

ECIT strengthened the trustworthiness of the results. Although there are some disadvantages in

ECIT, in general it was suitable for this study’s constructivist framework and exploratory nature.

Methods

In this section, I describe the methods I applied in this research study. The research

population is explained, as well as the criteria used for participant inclusion or exclusion in the

study. I detail the data collection methods as well as the data analysis procedures. Finally, I

discuss how trustworthiness was established, include a researcher subjectivity statement, ethical

considerations, and study limitations.

Research population

The research population selected for this study involved female students in their

undergraduate program of study at PFU. The study chose female students, as the gender-

segregated female undergraduate programs represent a majority of the total student population.

As the female population was the largest, understanding these students’ experiences would have

a broader impact on future interventions by instructors and administrators. There is precedence

for limiting educational research studies at UAE educational institutions to one gender in other

recent studies (Hatherley-Greene, 2012a; Mahani, 2014; Mahani & Molki, 2011); therefore, I

chose to study female students.

The decision to focus on female students in their undergraduate program, but not in any

one program, was made for several reasons. First, I believed that by looking at many programs,

students would have a broader set of experiences to draw from when considering what had

helped and hindered them in their engagement. It was also a particular perspective for studying


student experiences at UAE educational studies, as the literature has focused on students

studying English (Engin & McKeown, 2012, 2017; Hatherley-Greene, 2012a), freshman and

first-year (Adam, 2019; Halawah, 2006; Saafin, 2008), first-generation students (Mahani, 2014),

or comparing English and degree program experiences (Raymond, 2008).

Inclusion and exclusion criteria. In order to be included in the study, students needed to

be female undergraduate students in a baccalaureate program at PFU in the Spring 2017

semester. They needed to be willing to discuss their experiences and perceived helping and

hindering critical incidents concerning their engagement in learning at PFU both in detail and in

English. Participants needed to be available for two interviews (a primary data collection in-

person interview, and a participant cross-check interview by phone) at a time agreeable to both

the participant and me. Participants also needed to agree to the terms in the consent form and

agree to sign it. Woolsey (1986) stated that a “sample must not consist of persons selected for

characteristics that are related in a systematic way to the activity being studied” (p. 245). For this

reason, students did not need to self-identify as being either academically successful or engaged

in order to participate in the study, although this may have occurred because they were interested

in the topic. Participants were excluded from the study if they were current or past students in

classes I taught or had participated in focus groups or interviews related to my work as a faculty

member at PFU, as they may not have felt comfortable to explore incidents related to

experiences with me in a power position.

Participant recruitment. Participants were recruited by various methods. An email

announcement was included in a regular newsletter sent to all female students, and posters were

displayed on notice boards describing the study. I contacted one faculty member in each of

PFU’s colleges and asked to give a short presentation in their classes. Although I sent a request


to a faculty member in each college, they were not all able to accommodate me. Overall, I did 10

recruitment presentations in six colleges (two colleges, were not represented because of time

availability for recruitment presentations). Potential participants were given an email address and

a mobile phone number to contact me. After receiving a statement of interest in participation, I

confirmed that the participant met the inclusion criteria and suggested possible time slots in the

upcoming week. Upon confirmation of a time, I sent a simplified version of the interview

questions, asking participants to come to the interview with an idea in mind about one engaging

and one disengaging learning experience from their undergraduate experience. Moores and

Popadiuk (2011) prepped interviewees in a similar way, asking them to think about critical

incidents before their interview. Participants’ interviews were scheduled in the order in which

they confirmed interest. Participants were given a flyer after their interview, which I encouraged

them to give to other female students they thought might be interested.

When using ECIT, the number of participants used in the study “is determined on the

basis of number of critical incidents and not number of people” (Woolsey, 1986, p. 246).

Butterfield et al. (2009) recommended keeping a running tally sheet of all interviews to track the

emergence of new categories and suggested that data collection interviews should continue until

exhaustiveness is reached, meaning no new categories emerged. However, in practice although I

attempted to follow this procedure, the data categories were not immediately clear as I finished

interviewing participants. As interviews progressed to about the 16th interview I was starting to

hear repetition. I decided that I would complete the interviews with the five remaining

participants that had booked interviews from the initial recruitment campaign. Then during the

data analysis, I kept the tally up to date, and found that no new categories emerged after the 15th

interview, confirming that exhaustiveness had been reached.


Data collection methods

Relating to the research question and the aim of this study to understand the experience

from the female students’ perspective, I asked the participants to self-report their experiences of

being engaged or disengaged in learning through interviews. The data collection methods and

interview guide were based on the work and suggestions described by Butterfield et al. (2009).

In total, I interviewed 21 participants. In the following section, I explain the main data

collection interviews and the participant cross-check interviews. The interview guides I

developed and used are outlined in Appendix 2.

Main data collection interview.

In order to test the interview guide clarity and provide a better time estimate, I conducted

pilot interviews with two female students not included in the study. I reviewed the second pilot

interview with my supervisor at the time, and we made some minor modifications to the

questions.

I did the main data collection interview face-to-face in a quiet, private location on Dubai

campus. Each interview took approximately 1 hour. The interviews were audio-recorded on a

digital recorder and transcribed afterward. I used the interview guide (see Appendix 2) to

conduct the interview and took short notes. I also kept a brief interview diary, discussed in more

detail in the subjectivity statement.

As each participant arrived at the interview location, I spent a moment or two informally

welcoming them and getting them settled in the room. I anticipated that many participants had

never been interviewed for a research project before, so before the formal interview I casually

asked if they had been a participant in a research study. In many cases they had not, so I gave a

simple verbal overview of the process and offered encouragement if they mentioned they were


nervous or this was a new experience. I had participants sign the consent form (detailed

information in the Ethical Considerations section, and Appendix 1), and then had them fill in a

contact information sheet with their preferred methods to be reached for the follow-up interview.

Finally, I started the audio recording and the formal interview began.

The main data collection interview was divided into two parts: (a) contextual questions,

and (b) critical incident questions. I used the contextual questions to help orient the participant to

the research topic and put them at ease. I asked participants to explain where they were in their

program of study, what being engaged as a student meant to them, and whether they had had a

chance to think about a time they were engaged and disengaged with learning (from the

interview confirmation email).

Then I started the critical incident questions, which were divided into three main sections.

In the first section I asked participants to recount a time when they were particularly engaged

with learning; in the second I asked about a time when they were particularly disengaged with

learning; in the final section I asked the participants to suggest a wish list in which they

considered what they might advise a future teacher how to help them engage in learning.

Between each section in the interview, I used the listening method (Burns, 2014; Moran, 2014)

when I summarized and paraphrased helping and hindering factors, and repeated it to the

research participant for clarification.

The interviews varied in how they unfolded. As mentioned earlier, most students at the

institution speak Arabic as their first language, so although it was not asked as a part of the

protocol, it is likely that English was a second or other language. I was conscious of rewording

or adding synonym statements in question stems if needed. Participants made frequent errors in

word order, grammar, and pronunciation that I did not immediately stop to check but clarified


with them if the meaning was not clear from the context. In some interviews, more prompting

with question stems was needed to encourage participants to explain complete details. Many

participants expressed frustration that they struggled to find the words in English to explain what

they meant. Throughout the interview if a participant paused but showed an emotional

expression, I checked in by saying, “Your body language looks like you’re feeling _____ about

that, is that correct?” to make sure it was captured and to prompt them to speak more about it.

On some occasions a participant was unable to tell me about an experience that was

specific enough for the study. For a self-reported incident to be considered complete for

inclusion in an ECIT study, it needs to have a sufficiently high level of detail (Butterfield et al.,

2005). Therefore, it was important that participants responded with details to questions about

their experience before, during, and after their incident. I also needed to hear specific aspects

about the personal and social factors related to the incident.

In some interviews, before completing the detailed explanation of a particular incident,

the participant would go off track and start to describe a different incident. Given the limited

time of the interview, I aimed to collect only the details of one engaged and one disengaged

incident. So in these cases when the participant started to shift to a different incident, I redirected

them to their original incident topic and asked them to clarify the details. In some cases,

however, participants did not follow redirection to the original incident or were unable to explain

the details of the original incident. This meant that in some interviews several “incident ideas”

were mentioned by the participant but lacking enough detail to be considered complete for the

study. In self-report CIT studies, this lack of detail means that the incident data is not complete

and thus cannot be used in the data analysis. In the cases when the details of an incident were

unclear, I excluded interview data from the data analysis. Further, if an interview had a complete


incident, as well as some extra “incident ideas,” I kept the focus of the data analysis on the

complete incidents.

As often occurs in CIT interviews, some participants simply needed to be prompted to

discuss their engagement or disengagement, and very little follow-up questioning was required.

For other participants, more prompting was required in order to recollect the appropriate details.

As I had given a short prompt of the interview questions to participants by email before the

interview, some participants came in prepared, and started to discuss their incident before the

formal interview even began (the moment they walked into the interview room before consent

was discussed or signed). I suspect this was related to inexperience with being a research

participant in an interview or nervousness. For these participants, I thanked them for their

enthusiasm and redirected them to ensure the proper consent and interview protocol with

recording was followed.

Participant cross-check interview.

To boost the integrity of my interpretation, I went back to the participants who were

included in the data analysis for a second short interview to allow them to review my initial

analysis and make any corrections or additions. First, I sent the individual participants a

summary of the critical incidents that I had extracted from their interview, as well as a list of the

tentative themes into which I had placed the participant’s incidents. I then requested a short 5-to

10-minute phone interview with the participants to have them check that I had correctly extracted

their incident items. This opportunity allowed them to offer feedback on the themes I had

assigned and follow up on any missing details as per the interview guide in Appendix 2. The

interview was not audio-recorded and was not transcribed, but I took notes. Overall, very few


changes were made. Two participants did not respond to the request and a reminder (Badria and

Khadija), but the others all did. Minimal changes were made based on the cross-check.

Data analysis

In line with data analysis procedures for critical incident studies described by Holloway

and Schwartz (2014), I engaged in three phases in the data analysis:

1. Characterization of incidents

2. Emergent thematic coding of incidents

3. Cross-comparison of incidents into antecedents, incidents and impacts

Phase 1 of my analysis had three main goals: (a) to confirm that the incidents collected were

related to the research question, (b) to gain an overall understanding of the data, and (c) to

describe the sample so that others could make judgements about transferability. First, I read

through all the transcripts of the 21 interviews and identified the reported incidents relating to the

research question. Although it may seem obvious that responses would relate to the research

questions, Holloway and Schwartz (2014) mentioned it is possible some may not. In the two

cases where participants did not respond with detailed incidents, they were excluded at this point.

Only incidents that included a detailed recounting of times when students perceived they were

engaged or disengaged with learning with explanations of the helping and hindering factors from

their perspective were further analyzed. Next, to gain an understanding of the data, I reviewed all

the interview transcripts looking for characteristics that described the incidents (e.g., type,

setting, or focus). As the final step of the first phase, I calculated frequencies of the

characteristics of the incidents.

In phase two, I undertook the thematic coding of incidents. I used an emergent coding

approach, when I assigned descriptive codes directly from the interview data. I recorded the


codes as nodes in an NVivo database. Butterfield et al. (2009) explained I should begin with

three interviews and mark each transcript as per the system. As it is up to the researcher “to

discern any patterns, themes, similarities, or differences among the incidents” (p. 272) I grouped

the codes conceptually to inductively create categories that emerged from the data for the first

three interviews. I continued with the coding with a second batch of three transcripts, and then

made modifications to the category structure. I repeated working in batches until completing this

for all 19 transcripts, and then finally, the categories were grouped into themes through an

iterative process. Holloway and Schwartz (2014) stated that in a gradual process of sorting down

to a smaller group of themes, there “are patterns of description that emerge from the meanings

that participants attach to their experiences. Themes help researchers begin to gain a conceptual

understanding of how participants construct an understanding of their experiences” (p. 9). I used

this information for the participant cross-check interview and modified the themes.

Often in the final phase data analysis in CIT, incidents are organized in three stages: (a)

antecedents (things that happened before the incident), (b) the incident itself, and (c) impacts

(events or thoughts that happened after or because of the incident). The incidents are compared

to the major themes to find relevant patterns. For many CIT studies, the incident may be an event

that has a very clear before and after, for example, accessing psychological services (Burns,

2014). Although I prompted participants in their interview to explain experiences that happened

before and after their incident, given the complexity of the way engagement in learning is

experienced, most were not able to describe it in such a lock-step fashion. Participants were able

to give a full picture of their experience but they were not always able to draw direct connections

in a linear form of experiences that led up to the incident, the actual incident, and the later

impacts. Rather, they tended to be tangled together. I reviewed the data multiple times to try to


disentangle the order and have presented my interpretation of the sequences, at times needing to

infer.

Subjectivity Statement

As a qualitative researcher, I cannot claim to be objective. I navigated dual roles in this

study both as an employee of the institution where it is set, and a researcher of student

experiences within it. I brought my own worldview and experiences as a student, instructor, and

employee into the study. My subjectivity, although I have worked to manage it, affects the

analysis of the data and the interpretation of the results.

Being an insider in the organization was helpful so far as being able to get permission to

undertake the study, recruit participants, and conduct interviews on campus (which is closed to

the public). However, being an insider also affected my subjectivity during the data collection

and analysis. I was aware that my insider knowledge might prejudice my findings and reminded

participants that I was there to document their experiences and there were no wrong answers. I

had several interviews in which participants described course activities or policies that I was

familiar with because of my insider role but I had to ensure I collected complete details from the

participants’ perspective rather than my own. In some cases, I could see that the participants did

not experience an activity as the faculty member had intended and found them confusing or

frustrating. I needed to be vigilant to try to hear the participants’ experiences without imposing

my own thoughts or trying to redirect their impressions.

Although I am an insider in the institution where the study took place, I am an outsider to

the culture of the participant population that were all Emirati women. Nevertheless, I have nearly

11 years of experience living and working in the region which offers some, albeit still limited,

understanding of the culture. Perhaps importantly for the research findings, my position as an


outsider is common for many of the faculty and staff in the roles of teaching and supporting

learning in this cultural context, so I believe the interpretation of the data from this viewpoint

may be helpful to other practitioners.

I engaged in certain activities to manage my bias. I kept an interview diary and after

interviews noted down circumstances when I thought I might have influenced the participants’

answers. For example, I was surprised to hear a participant discuss a class activity that I was

familiar with because I had consulted with the instructor about it previously. However, I could

tell from the participant’s description of their experience that they had not understood the activity

instruction. I was conscious during the interview not to correct the participant, and I noted in my

diary to review my questions and responses in the transcripts to ensure I did not unduly project

my impression. The participant cross-check interviews were helpful in ensuring that I had not

misrepresented any of the participants’ ideas. The trustworthiness checks where I had

conversations with experienced colleagues (details below) were also helpful in identifying some

areas in which I was influenced by my assumptions. My perceptions and assumptions cannot be

removed from this research, but I endeavoured to manage my bias.

Trustworthiness

By conducting a historical review of CIT studies, Butterfield et al. (2005) found there

was wide variation in the procedures for establishing credibility and trustworthiness, and it

“appears that the language and procedures used to establish the credibility of findings from a CIT

study have tended to follow a more positivistic line” (p. 485). The use of statistical tests such as

standard deviations or drawing new samples from the same population were checks that had been

used in the past. With the shift away from using observable behaviours toward using self-reports

of personal experiences as the main unit of data collected, Butterfield et al. (2005) called for


some revisiting of the earlier work on credibility and trustworthiness. Therefore, to ensure

trustworthiness in self-reporting studies focused on personal experiences rather than task

analysis, nine credibility checks must be done as part of an ECIT study (Butterfield et al., 2009).

These checks are “especially useful when the study involves the report of perceptions regarding

an experience rather than direct observation of a behaviour” (2009, p. 274), as was the case in

this study. Each check is described below and followed in this study:

1. Audio-recording interviews. I audio-recorded interviews on a digital recording device so

that I could work directly with the participants’ words to ensure accurate representation.

2. Interview fidelity. Every third or fourth interview, I had the audio-recording reviewed by

my supervisor, a person who was familiar with the ECIT. The reason was to ensure that I

was conducting the interview properly, that I followed the interview guide, and that I was

not asking leading questions.

3. Independent extraction of CIs. I had a colleague with ten years of teaching experience in

the region review approximately 25% of the interview transcripts and extract what they

understood to be the critical incidents and wish-list items. When there was any

disagreement on the items extracted, we discussed these discrepancies (primarily

regarding incomplete incidents), which resulted in some minor changes to the incident

details used in the data analysis.

4. Exhaustiveness. Interviewing in an ECIT study continues until no new categories emerge,

which is referred to as exhaustiveness. This stage was reached as discussed in the

Research Participants section.

5. Participation rates. For each theme, it is common in CIT to report the percentage of

participants who reported an item so that strength and credibility can be established and


reported. Through the use of nodes in NVivo I tracked which participant identified each

item and reported these counts in the findings chapter.

6. Placing incidents into themes by an independent judge. In this credibility check, I sent a

different colleague, with fifteen years of teaching experience in the region, a random list

of about one quarter of the examples from each theme, as well as a list of the theme

descriptions. I then asked them to sort the items into themes. The goal is a match rate of

80% or better (Andersson & Nilsson, 1964), and after discussion we were able to achieve

complete agreement.

7. Cross-checking by participants. This credibility check involved going back to the

participants for a second short interview, which I conducted as explained in the data

collection methods.

8. Expert opinion. This check had the finalized list of themes reviewed by an expert in the

field. I asked them to comment on whether the themes were useful, whether they found

anything surprising, and whether they found anything missing. I recruited an experienced

faculty member with twenty years of teaching experience at the institution to complete

this check and make some minor changes to language.

9. Theoretical agreement. I compared the findings with the existing scholarly literature in

the field which is presented in Chapter 5.

Ethical Considerations

As this research involved collection of data from human subjects, it was important that

ethical issues were considered as part of the research design and adhered to throughout the

research project. I submitted (and had accepted) an ethical review to the University of Calgary

Conjoint Faculties Research Ethics Board (REB16-2047), and the PFU Research Ethics


Committee. I completed the Course on Research Ethics (CORE) tutorial to adhere to the

University of Calgary’s observance to the Tri-Council Policy Statement 2 guidelines, and the

Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) social and behavioural research modules to

adhere to PFU policy for research involving human subjects.

Throughout the data collection, I was conscious that participants would speak Arabic as

their first language and English as a second-or-other language, so I adjusted accordingly. I

modified the consent template from the University of Calgary to simplify the language and make

it more accessible (see Appendix 1). When I first made appointments for interviews, I sent the

potential participants the informed consent form to ensure they had ample time to review it. I

also sent a request to prepare for the interview. The request was to think of a specific time they

were very engaged and very disengaged with learning at PFU because I wanted them to collect

their ideas before having to express them in a second language. Before each interview began, I

asked if they had had a chance to review the consent form on their own, and then we did a

section-by-section review of the form together, answering any questions as we went. I was

conscious that many participants were participating in their first research interview and wanted

to ensure they could ask any questions. After this, I gave them time to review the form on their

own and decide if they wanted to sign it, which all participants did. In the consent form, I asked

participants to provide a pseudonym. Many participants found it unfamiliar and struggled with

the idea. Most asked me to select one for them, which I did as a part of the data analysis. I

generated a list of suitable pseudonyms by asking an experienced colleague (independent judge

from step 6 of the trustworthiness checks) to create a list of the common student names from

their teaching experience at the institution and assigned them to the participants. This pseudonym

was used to refer to the participants throughout the data analysis and reporting. A third-party


transcription company with a confidentiality agreement was used. After transcription, I assigned

further pseudonyms to any of the people referred to in participant interviews (like instructor,

friend, or sibling names), to ensure that confidentiality was maintained. In the reporting stages of

the project, the confidentiality of participants remained of the utmost importance. When

reporting incidents and using quotations, I placed priority on maintaining the confidentiality of

the participants.

Limitations and Delimitations

Various limitations occurred in this study. The study only explained the experiences of

female students at PFU that self-selected to participate, as it was designed to be exploratory and

learn about the factors that participants perceived to be helping and hindering their engagement

in learning in university. As such, the results are based on the experience of women in the study.

A second limitation is that I, the researcher, can only report the results as being tentative, as they

are dependent upon my subjective creation of themes and placement of incidents in these themes.

The credibility checks were helpful in addressing this limitation, as some of the incidents were

extracted by someone other than myself and placed into a theme by another independent person.

Both the participants and experts in the field verified the themes.

The ECIT depends on participants being able to remember their stories in detail and

being willing to tell their stories openly and honestly (Sharoff, 2008). I had only two interactions

with the participants and no extended relationship with them; therefore, I endeavoured to build

an open and safe environment in the interview setting. Participants may have chosen not to

disclose their story in complete detail, or they may have forgotten details or embellished the

incidents. Including only incidents that the participants could explain both generally and in detail

helped to mitigate this issue. I also used an interview guide to ensure that the questions were


presented to each participant in the same way, as small changes in the wording of questions has

been found to vary results (Sharoff, 2008).

Some delimitations of the study exist in relation to the chosen population. PFU was the

only institution used in this study. Only female students were interviewed, because the programs

offered to females at PFU are different from those offered to males, and this study wanted to

pursue the perspectives of women. I delimited the study to include the perceptions of students,

which are a particular subset of those involved in the learning environment and excluded

instructors, administrators, and supporting staff. Although this allowed a focus on what was

important to female students, including the perspectives of the others might reveal interesting

findings which would influence practice. I chose to include students from early and late in their

undergraduate degrees, and from a variety of programs. Studying engagement in certain

programs or points in a degree program or across institutions in the context could also bear on

findings that would further understanding. Finally, studying students’ perception of their

engagement longitudinally or in more tightly controlled timeframes could help to understand

engagement and how it changes over time.

Chapter Summary

This chapter provided an overview of the methodology for this study. I began with a

discussion related to the research paradigm for the study. Next, given the possible lack of

familiarity with CIT, I gave an overview of the origins of CIT, and the development over time of

CIT for use in interpretivist approaches. I then reviewed a collection of different applications of

CIT, and finally discussed the suitability of CIT for this study. In the next major section, I

discussed the methods I undertook for the study. I explained my decisions on the research

population, the data collection, and the data analysis procedures. Next, I discussed my


subjectivity and the methods undertaken to ensure trustworthiness. Finally, I finished the chapter

with ethical considerations, limitations and delimitations.


Chapter 4: Findings

This chapter presents the findings from the 21 interviews conducted for this study,

separated into three phases as described by Holloway and Schwartz (2014). Phase 1 begins with

a general description of the data set, which includes demographic data, the participants’

definitions of engagement, frequencies of the incident types (engaged and disengaged) and

focuses (coursework assignments, teaching approaches, or extracurricular activities). Next, I

present a general summary of the incidents by type and focus. In Phase 2, I explain the themes

that emerged from the participant data by personal and social factors, and incident type. I include

theme descriptions and participant quotations to explain their meaning. Then, I present the

themes from the wish-list portion of the interview. Finally, I complete Phase 3, a cross-

comparison of the incidents.

Phase 1: Characterization of Incidents

In this section, following Holloway and Schwartz’s (2014) data analysis procedures for

critical incident studies, I describe the sample, confirming that the collected incidents relate to

the research question, and explain an overview of the data.

Description of the sample

The study sample involved 21 female students at various points in their academic

program with half in the first or second year of their program, and half in the third or fourth year.

The progression is relevant because at the institution, the first two years of study is a general

education program (University College) with a set curriculum. In the third and fourth year,

students take courses only in their major. One participant was in her first year of study, and nine

participants were in their second year of study, meaning that altogether 10 participants were at

least partially in the general education program. Four participants were in their third year, and


seven were in their final year, meaning that 11 participants were taking courses related only to

their major. Although I recruited participants campus-wide, the greatest participation came from

the Environmental Science program. Table 1 below includes the participants’ reported program

of study.

Table 1

Demographic Details of Participants

Pseudonym Program Year of

program

Program Entry

Amna Environmental Science 4th Language Development

Aisha University College/Information Technology 2nd Language Development

Afra Environmental Science 3rd Language Development

Badria Environmental Science 4th Language Development

Bedoor Information Technology 2nd Direct

Fatima University College/Interior Design 2nd Language Development

Hamda Environmental Science 4th Language Development

Hessa University College/International Studies 1st Direct

Hind Environmental Science 4th Language Development

Jamila Environmental Science 3rd Language Development

Laila Environmental Science 3rd Direct

Khadija Security and Networking 4th Language Development

Mariam Environmental Science 3rd Direct

Moza International Affairs 2nd Transfer

Nadia Management Information Systems 2nd Language Development

Reem Public Health and Nutrition 2nd Direct

Suhaila International Affairs 2nd Language Development

Sheikha Public Health and Nutrition 2nd Direct

Salma Graphic Design 2nd Transfer

Wafa Psychology 4th Direct

Zainab Psychology 4th Direct

The participants in the sample entered the university by different pathways. Most (11) of

the participants had initially joined the university by spending some time in the language

development program until they achieved the required language requirement (aligned with


approximately an IETLS 5.5 score). Many of the participants (8) had entered directly from high

school into the University College general program. Finally, a small number of participants (2)

had transferred to the institution after completing courses at a different local university.

Consequently, the sample includes perspectives from female students at various points in their

program, with varying pathways of entry into the university.

Confirmation that incidents related to the research question

To confirm that the incidents pertained to my research question, I read through all the

transcripts to identify the incidents. I used criteria guidance from Butterfield et al. (2005) to

guide my decisions on inclusion. They stated that incidents needed to meet three criteria: "(a)

they consist of antecedent information (what led up to it); (b) they contain a detailed description

of the experience itself; and (c) they describe the outcome of the incident" (p. 488). Further, it

was essential that the emphasis of the incident was related to the focus of my research question.

Based on these criteria, I included 37 incidents from 19 participants. These incidents all

comprised recounting times when participants perceived they were engaged or disengaged with

learning at university, complete with detailed explanations of the factors that were important

from their perspective.

I decided the engaged and disengaged incidents from both Bedoor and Suhaila and the

disengaged incident from Salma should be excluded from the study because they did not meet

the inclusion criteria. Bedoor and Suhaila gave limited detail about a collection of general

situations, so did not have enough specific or coherent detail to form incidents. Salma’s

disengaged explanation did not concentrate on her engagement in learning so was not related to

the focus of the research question.


Overall understanding of the data

Next, to gain an understanding of the data, I re-read the interview transcripts and looked

for characteristics that would help describe the incidents. I decided there were two prominent

characteristics portrayed in the incidents which could be helpful in understanding the data:

• Type of engagement: Engaged or disengaged

• Focus of the incident: Coursework, teaching approach, extracurricular activity

Type of engagement.

There were two general types of incident, engaged and disengaged, primarily because of

the structure of the interview. In the following table, I present the frequencies of the included

incidents to describe the sample.

Table 2

Included Incident Frequency by Type

Engaged Disengaged

Frequency Percentage Frequency Percentage Total

Total 19 51% 18 49% 37

Focus of the incident. After reading and re-reading the transcripts, I felt it was important

to describe and categorize the general focus of the incidents recounted by participants.

Participants made individual decisions about the examples they chose for their incidents as long

as (a) it was an example of a time they were engaged or disengaged with learning, and (b) it drew

from their undergraduate experience at the university. I did not guide participants to choose a

course, teacher, or experience. However, after reviewing the incidents, I decided the incidents fit

quite firmly into three categories. Overall, most (26) incidents concentrated on a coursework

assignment, some (9) highlighted a particular teaching approach, and a small number (2) centred

on a specific extracurricular activity.


Table 3

Incident Frequency by Focus

Focus of Incident Engaged Disengaged Total

Coursework assignment 14 11 25

Teaching approach 3 7 10

Extracurricular activity 2 0 2

Total 19 18 37

Above, I described the sample in terms of frequencies of type and focus of the incidents.

Next, I present a description of the participants’ definitions of engagement.

Definitions of engagement

At the start of the interviews, as a way to have the participants define what it meant to

them to be engaged or disengaged, I asked them to describe how they knew if a student was

engaged or disengaged. Their responses had elements of several general definitions.

I discovered the most common definition from participants (Amna, Aisha, Hessa,

Khadija, Moza, Reem, Sheikha) was that an engaged student was one who was behaviourally

compliant to the rules of a classroom. This student came to class on time, handed work in by the

deadline, and participated in discussions. Some added the student behaved like they “wanted to

be there.”

Other participants (Mariam, Nadia) discussed how being an engaged student was a choice

when an individual took an interest in the subject, asked questions, and chose to share her

opinions and ideas in class. To them, a disengaged student was one who was simply not

behaviourally obedient. This student would be likely to come to class late and only because of

attendance requirements (the institution requires class attendance; students who miss over 15%

of classes without excuse will automatically receive a WF withdraw/fail from the course), would

possibly play on their phone or computer for much of the class, would not complete required


work by the deadline, and chose not to pay attention or participate in class activities or

discussions. Although these behaviours might sound like descriptions of two different

individuals, many of the participants said that they were sometimes one and sometimes the other

depending on multiple factors such as the course, topic, or the day.

I found another group of participants (Badria, Fatima, Hamda) aligned the idea of being

engaged with being able to make autonomous decisions about their learning. For example, they

said that when students were treated as mature enough to make choices about how to approach

an assignment, or when they were able to elect to take courses on topics related to their major

rather than general required courses, they would be engaged.

Some participants defined engagement as the product of an interaction between the

students in the class, the instructor, and the material (Hind, Jamila, Laila, Wafa, Zainab). Their

definitions contained actions the students undertook in class such as seeking out new

information, co-operating, approaching the course with a positive attitude, and doing actions the

instructor initiated, such as building a friendly and flexible environment.

Lastly, I found two participants defined engaged students as individuals who chose to be

involved in university extracurricular activities that aligned with their interests (Afra, Salma).

These two participants both went on to describe engaged incidents that were examples of their

involvement in extracurricular activities.

Overall, all the definitions described engagement and disengagement as transitional states

that could be entered into for reasons related to multiple complex factors, often not entirely

controlled by the participant. Being engaged and disengaged were not seen as static traits of an

individual, rather it was one that changed according to a variety of external and internal factors.


Descriptions of incidents by focus

To show which elements participants chose to emphasize, I will now provide a summary

of the incidents by focus (coursework, teaching approach, extracurricular). For me to categorize

an incident as focusing on a coursework assignment, it needed to centre on a formal course

assessment (project, paper, laboratory report, etc.) as the object of the participant’s engagement.

To be categorized as a teaching approach, the participant’s incident concentrated on the actions

and methods of a particular instructor. Finally, to be classified as extracurricular, the participant

spotlighted an activity external to a formal course, but still part of a university-sanctioned

endeavour. I list the included participant breakdown of the focuses in Table 4, and following this,

I give a general description of the incidents related to each focus.

Coursework assignment (25/37).

I found that most participants recounted incidents focused on their effort on a coursework

assignment (25 of 37).

Engaged—Coursework assignment (14/19).

By far, most of the engaged incidents chosen by participants concerned a coursework

assignment (14 of 19), and the examples included many of the application-type assignments

commonly part of university courses. For example, assignments may have involved the

following: to do a group project to solve a problem; collect data from off-campus for later

analysis; write a research or persuasive paper about a topic they found interesting; critique a

video; perform an experiment; volunteer off-campus; participate in role play; create a

progressive design in a sketchbook; or create a website. Study participants selected a variety of

individual or group assignments. Notably, although all these were formal in-course assessments,

none were examinations or tests.


Table 4

Participant Incident Focus

Participant Engaged Focus Disengaged Focus

Amna Coursework Coursework

Aisha Coursework Coursework

Afra Extracurricular Coursework

Badria Coursework Coursework

Fatima Coursework Coursework

Hamda Coursework Teaching approach

Hessa Coursework Coursework

Hind Coursework Coursework

Jamila Teaching approach Teaching approach

Laila Coursework Coursework

Khadija Coursework Teaching approach

Mariam Teaching approach Coursework

Moza Coursework Coursework

Nadia Coursework Teaching approach

Reem Teaching approach Teaching approach

Sheikha Coursework Teaching approach

Salma Extracurricular N/A

Wafa Coursework Coursework

Zainab Coursework Teaching approach

Disengaged—Coursework assignments (11/18).

Although a smaller proportion than the engaged incidents, I observed that most of the

participants still chose to describe their participation in a coursework assignment for their

disengaged incident (11 of 18) over the other focuses. Most of the incidents (7) described by

participants were written essays or reports. Although the topics and structure varied, they

included lab reports, book reviews, a persuasive essay, and research papers. The participants

frequently noted the difficulty of the assignments because they did not enjoy writing, and in

many cases were frustrated when they received feedback that details of their work needed to be

improved.


Teaching approach (10/37).

I found that three engaged incidents and seven disengaged incidents (10 total)

emphasized a teaching approach. The participants talked about the characteristics and methods of

a teacher that either supported or discouraged their engagement. Although the coursework

assignments would clearly have been embedded in a particular teaching approach, I decided

there was a subset of the incidents where participants centred more on the teacher's approach

than the characteristics or individual effort on the assignment as the crucial component of their

engagement or disengagement. For me to classify an incident as focusing on the teaching

approach, participants may have mentioned course assessments but placed the reasoning for their

engagement or disengagement with the instructor rather than on the task. In the next section, I

describe the engaged incidents focusing on the teaching approach, and then the disengaged

incidents.

Engaged—Teaching approach (3/19).

When a teaching approach was the focus of an engaged incident, the participants

represented the instructors as supportive and attentive, and they seemed to have a positive

relationship with them. Participants emphasized the importance of receiving personalized,

positive feedback from the instructor, and the way they set high but achievable expectations.

Further, they mentioned the way the instructors encouraged questioning and inspired the students

to solve and analyse problems and genuinely understand the material, rather than to memorize it.

They also described a teacher who worked hard to reduce the barriers between themselves and

the students and sought to understand what the students were trying to communicate despite

language challenges. Finally, the instructor respected students’ opinions even if they were not the

same as theirs and learned from the students; they did not act as if they were “higher” than the


students. In summary, a positive relationship with an instructor who had high expectations and

energy often matched the engaged incidents in this category.

Disengaged—Teaching approach (7/18).

Seven disengaged incidents dealt with the teaching approach. In four of these incidents, I

found participants described experiences where they felt the instructor just did not recognize that

most students in the class did not understand the material and so they did not adjust to support

them better. For example, several indicated in each of their cases that the instructor just kept

progressing through the content despite few of the students comprehending. In general, poor

pacing and scaffolding seemed the most common concern associated with these disengaged

incidents about the teaching approach.

The assessment approach played into some of these incidents. Two participants indicated

the exams included questions they did not think they had been appropriately prepared for by the

instructor. They believed that despite having studied and done extra work on their own outside

the class, they did not feel the instructor was fairly assessing them on what they had been taught

and this was the reason for their disengagement.

Another participant described an instructor who used a teaching style that involved a lot

of discussion, and she found it confusing. The teaching approach centred on group work in

which the instructor would ask the class questions and the responses from students made up the

answers. She said she wanted more summaries and explanation directly from the instructor,

stating the readings were too challenging for her and learning difficult material from other

students’ comments was not explicit enough. In this case, the teaching approach was too

unstructured for her learning.


Overall, the disengaged incidents based on a teaching approach had students reporting a

miscommunication or misunderstanding about pacing, assessment, or class structure.

Extracurricular (2, only engaged).

A small number of participants’ engaged incidents (and no disengaged incidents)

involved the participants explaining their voluntary involvement in an extracurricular project as

their example of a time when they were very engaged with learning. Afra described her role as a

student participant on a faculty-led interdisciplinary research project. She thought she was a

different version of herself when she participated in the project when compared to her behaviour

in class; she overcame shyness, worked in a collaborative group, gained confidence and could

test out her ideas and get genuine feedback from more senior people. Salma described her

participation in the Peer Assistance Leader (PALs) program as the most engaged she had been in

learning at university. Soon after starting to work as a PAL, she set herself goals to become a

mentor and described a process where she worked with the manager to build the knowledge,

skills, and confidence to achieve the goal. The social connections of the “family” of PALS was a

significant draw for her, and she liked the responsibility and recognition that came with

representing the university at events (something PALS are often called on to do). Through her

time at PALS she had learned to set and achieve goals and gained considerable confidence in

herself. Both Afra and Salma valued the importance of the social connections, responsibility, and

independence they found in these experiences.

Phase 1. Summary

The purpose of this section was to offer an overview of the incidents. I started by giving a

description of the sample and confirming the incidents I would include in the further analysis

were all related to the research question. I then summarized the participant definitions of


engagement. Next, I defined the types (engaged, disengaged) and focuses (coursework, teaching

approach, and extracurricular) that I created to describe the data, and displayed frequencies of

each, as is common in CIT. Finally, I outlined examples of the incidents broken down by

incident focus: coursework, teaching approach, and extracurricular activities. In the next section,

I will review the emergent themes and categories.

Phase 2: Emergent Categories and Themes

In Phase 2, I began the thematic coding of incidents. I started with an emergent coding

approach, in which the descriptive codes came directly from the interview data. I recorded the

codes as nodes in an NVivo database resulting in 112 helping and 76 hindering codes and 62

wish list items.

Following this, I began to group the codes conceptually to create categories that emerged

from the data. Finally, I iteratively grouped the categories into themes within the engaged or

disengaged types. As per the research question, I divided the themes into personal (factors that

participants thought, felt, or undertook themselves that supported their engagement) and social

(what other people, such as teachers, peers, or family, did to encourage their engagement). I

worked in cycles, grouping similar codes, re-reading areas of the transcripts, generating and

refining categories, then themes, and sorting themes into types. This analysis resulted in the

following themes and incident frequencies:


Table 5

Themes and Frequencies of Incidents

Engaged Disengaged

Personal

Theme Frequency Theme Frequency

Choice in the topic 11 Lack of interest in the topic 10

Personal development 10 Language issues 9

First times 10

Contextualized to their world 4

Social

Teachers’ characteristics and

actions

18 Teachers’ characteristics and

actions

18

Feedback 8 Expecting more guidance 7

Enthusiasm 6 Demotivated by feedback 4

Encouraging independence 6 Alienated teaching

relationship

4

Guidance with flexibility 6 Social supports (peers, family) 4

Approaches class as

learning together

4 Dysfunctional groups 3

Social supports (peers, family) 13

The right mix of a group 9

In summary, across all incidents, I developed themes that resulted in two areas of focus:

(a) personal (things participants did to support their engagement); and (b) social (things other

people such as teachers, peers, classmates, or family members did to encourage their

engagement). In this section, I discuss the engaged and disengaged personal factors first, in

descending order of frequency, and then, in the next section I turn to the engaged and disengaged

social factors (also in descending order of frequency).

Personal

Engaged: Choice in the topic (11/19).

I found the most prevalent theme supporting participants’ engagement was participants

having a sense of control over (or choice about) the topic or the type of activity they were


undertaking. For example, Aisha and Moza reported that when they were able to choose their

topics, it allowed them to add their voice and opinions, which they appreciated and found

motivating. When Badria was given the opportunity to choose a topic very different from those

of the other students in the class, she took pride in her final product because it was original,

which made it more interesting for her.

Some participants noted how motivating assessment flexibility was and allowed them to

select a topic with personal relevance; for example, Amna explained her reason for finding a

topic interesting: she had heard conflicting information about the topic from the instructor and

her family, and wanted to resolve the dissonance, which the coursework allowed her to do.

Sheikha voiced a personal interest in genetic engineering and she was able to dig deeply into it

with a flexible assignment in a writing course. Zainab cherished the flexibility and freedom to

choose the format of a final presentation which gave her agency on how to present what she had

learned in a way that emphasized her strengths. In general, I found participants reported that

being given the autonomy to choose a topic or type of assignment was a factor they often

connected with engaged incidents.

I also noticed that from the participants’ perspective, if the instructor did not allow the

participant autonomy regarding their topic, or required detailed but perhaps boring work, they

sometimes perceived it was because the instructor was rigid or disinterested, rather than being

associated with a course or curriculum requirement. Hessa and Afra provided their examples:

He didn't ask me to change it. Like other like teachers, if they're not interested in my

topic, they will ask me to change it. (Hessa)

I don’t like, come to the class and study whole, and then go to home and study the thing. I

am not really interested in these things. I’m interested in a project that that’s, like, I can


really learn something new something out of the book, something out. Sometimes the

teachers feel, like, you have to learn each detail. Sometimes it’s like annoying there.

(Afra)

Some participants indicated that by being allowed to choose the topic or assessment format, they

used this as a shortcut to avoid building required academic skills. For example, Hessa provided

an overview of how she chose a presentation format to avoid using statistics and summarising

other people’s information. In turn, she and Moza preferred to give their opinion rather than

using academic sources. Therefore, it is a difficult mix to allow students to find topics with

personal relevance but also challenge them to learn new information and skills.

Engaged: Personal development (10/19).

In the next most prevalent personal theme, I found 10 participants reported experiencing

a personal developmental change that resulted from the experience of their engaged incident. For

example, some participants described becoming more confident (Amna, Afra, Khadija, Sheikha,

Salma, Wafa), overcoming shyness (Afra), learning to handle anger (Afra), and developing

empathy (Nadia, Zainab), patience, and communication skills. Further, they reported being

interested in a topic for the learning beyond just the grades (Laila, Nadia, Wafa). Several

participants said they had started to plan or do things outside the university in different ways,

based on their experience of the engaged incident. Laila reported she undertook a new hobby

because of an interest sparked by her engaged incident; Zainab was considering applying for a

master’s degree; and Nadia stated that she was thinking about a job she had not previously

considered. Further, Moza discussed an assignment that encouraged her to compare her day-to-

day experience to people living in a different part of the world, helping her recognize how

privileged she was.


Moza: For me, not having that right car maybe is an issue. I want a bigger one. For them,

having a car is an issue. They need a car.

Interviewer: Yeah. Absolutely. It makes sense.

Moza: Yeah, it makes you think you’re a little spoiled.

Although the goals of the course or extracurricular activities were not intended to develop these

positive affective outcomes, for these participants they were a meaningful result of being

engaged.

Engaged: First times (10/19).

Similar to the previous theme, in 10 of the engaged incidents I learned participants

experienced something that was a “personal first,” which was an important factor for them. For

several, it was simply that the topic was entirely new to them, and they were exposed to a new

field or application of information which they could relate to and understand. For example,

Hamda recounted how she had learned a series of laboratory skills earlier in the course, and

based on that learning, she was excited that she was able to design her own experiment for the

first time. Nadia was involved in learning about and meeting people with disabilities through an

assignment, and this was something she had never known much about or had exposure to. Her

experience of spending time with people with disabilities for the first time challenged her to

overcome her stereotyped perceptions. Salma related how after she volunteered for the first time

as a part of the PALs program, her entire university experience changed. She joined PALs,

started volunteering more, became more involved in campus activities, met many new friends,

and became more interested in and serious about her studies.

For some others, the first time involved learning a new skill that was not connected to a

course learning outcome. For example, Amna and Aisha learned a technical tool (iMovie and


PowToons respectively) for the creation of the final group presentation. They felt it drew on their

strengths and liked it being a new practical skill. Sheikha spoke about how she learned for the

first time how to use the electronic journal resources available in the library, in which she found

a wealth of information well beyond what she had access to in high school. With this new skill,

she became engrossed in researching her topic.

Amna described a personal first time that was somewhat unexpected and different from

the others. In her incident, she described going with group members to interview people at a mall

off-campus. When indicating why she found the project engaging, she disclosed it was not

related to the course or project content, but rather that she had learned how to navigate getting

permission from her father to do things independently.

Amna: It’s good for the student to be interested. You know why, because my father, he

never lets me go outside by myself. Take your brother, take your sister. But I was

interested, so I’ve succeed my father to let me go to Global Village by myself and my

friend. He didn’t let me to go with my friends so that’s a problem. When you are

interested then you want something, you will do the best.

Interviewer: Okay. So you convinced him to let you go to do some of the interviews?

Amna: I've just talked to him, and I was confident by myself. I didn't tell him I want to

go. I told him I will go with my friend to this place. And he said why we have project,

something like that. Then he was ok. By the way, this is the first time, and I'll do it again

and again.

Interviewer: So you've tried to convince him before, but this was the first time you

succeeded?

Amna: Yeah. Because, you know, I’ve discovered the way to convince him by


telling him “I will go there.” That’s it.

When describing a time when they had been engaged, some participants said it was essential to

achieve competence and confidence in their first exposure to a particular topic, skill, or situation.

Interestingly, many of these first-time skills or situations did not seem connected to the expected

outcomes of the course assessment, but they were important to the participant’s perception of

their engagement.

Disengaged: Lack of interest (10/18).

The most common personal theme (10) emerging from the disengaged incidents was a

lack of interest in the topic. This lack of interest stemmed from a variety of reasons. First,

participants may have perceived the course material as useless or irrelevant. For example, Moza

said the material for the course initially sounded as though it would be interesting, but then she

felt that she already knew or understood the concepts taught in the course, and that made the

topic unenjoyable. She found the structure of an assessment irrelevant and not worth her effort,

so she felt justified in copying information from a website (which did not appear to be caught by

the instructor). Further, even though she was able to achieve a high grade in the course, she did

not engage with the material beyond simply producing what was required of her. Another

example of how material seemed unconnected was in the case of Mariam, who explained she

was frustrated by the topic for an assignment, as she felt the material was irrelevant to her world.

She said:

It’s totally disengaging because I'm learning about another country that's not mine. I want

to learn about my [emphasis added] country because that's eventually what I'll be

contributing to, not to that country.


Mariam did empathize with her instructor for trying to relate and connect the material about

different countries to the UAE context. However, she was expressing her frustration about

regularly having to learn information unlinked to the UAE context. She could not relate to these

other places, so she did not find the information about them relevant or exciting. So the lack of

interest about a topic may have come about because the material in the course was repetitive or

disconnected from the reality of these participants.

For other participants, I discovered their lack of interest stemmed from a requirement to

approach the topic in an academic way. For example, Hind said that writing a research paper was

not compelling because the assignment required her to take information from journal articles and

summarize it. For the activity to be interesting from her perspective, she wanted to be able to

direct the method of finding information, preferably through websites and videos instead of

journal articles. She said she was attracted to a lot of the topics they discussed in class, and she

was continually googling little pieces of information, reading short web pages, and watching

videos. Given how Hind also said she did not like reading, it is possible that the required journal

articles were too difficult for her to understand and summarize. From her perspective, however,

it was the requirement to use journal articles that made her disengage, perhaps pointing to an

emotional reaction to a difficult learning task.

Like some others, Hessa worked hard on producing what she thought the instructor

wanted, rather than something she found interesting. She indicated that although the instructor

gave her a lot of choice about the book she could use for her review, she chose one that she

thought the instructor would find interesting, even though it was not appealing to her. By trying

to please the instructor rather than following her interests, she ended up reviewing a book she did

not find interesting. Then because of this lack of interest, she did not expend much effort on it.


Since she was only trying to produce what she perceived the instructor wanted, it was not an

engaging task. Along similar lines, Jamila felt uninterested in the whole set of courses she was

taking that semester. She found the required courses were uninspiring and they all required

memorization. She felt she did not have the skills to do well in these courses and was frustrated

that she did not have a choice but needed to take them anyway. In these cases, I think the

participants’ reported lack of interest may stem from having little control over how to approach

the assignment or material, or they decided to produce what the instructor wanted rather than

show what they had learned.

When participants reported this lack of interest, I noticed it connected with their choosing

not to spend a lot of time on the material. For example, Fatima said when a course was not in her

major, she would focus only on the grade and wanting to finish it, but when it was in her major

area, she was more likely to invest time and energy beyond what the instructor required as part of

an assignment.

In summary, I found many participants discussed disengaging because they were not

interested and for varied additional reasons such as: not seeing the relevance of a topic, finding

the task too challenging, not being able to approach an assessment in a way they thought was

meaningful, and simply having other competing tasks (potentially more relevant) that distracted

them.

Disengaged: Language issues (9/18).

I found that most participants (9) identified issues related to language or their lack of skill

in reading, writing, or listening as a reason for their disengagement. While most courses in the

context used a medium of instruction of English, a small number of required courses are also in

Arabic.


As an example of language challenges, Hind said she did not enjoy reading and so she

chooses to avoid it whenever possible. In her disengaged incident, she revealed that she struggled

to understand the readings she was expected to use and found it time-consuming and frustrating

to have to search long research papers for small pieces of information, so she tended to give up.

When an assignment required a lot of reading, she disengaged. As another example, Amna

explained that any reading, especially when she was expected to do it quickly, was particularly

strenuous. She said that to understand what she was reading, she would need to read it repeatedly

to be able to comprehend it, which she said was a lot of work. Further, she said when she did put

in the time to complete an assigned reading before class, it seemed typical that her instructor

would re-explain the reading in a more straightforward way. As such, she expressed a preference

for the teacher to tell her the information, as it would “save everyone's time.” Hamda also voiced

frustration with instructor expectations about reading:

They told us to “read the book.” But the book is for one chapter is one hundred pages.

Too much. How long I will read? It contains different terms. Difficult. How many times I

translate? It's really hard. We are students. Not professional. As we know English

language is our second language not the first. So not for me, for everyone. It will be

really hard…I can't be engage with this material if I don't understand it. (Hamda)

Hamda sees a mismatch between the instructor’s expectations and her responsibility and role as a

student. She thinks the instructor does not understand how challenging it is for her and her

classmates to undertake the readings, and how much translation and time it will take for her to

understand it. She also mentioned an interesting link—she needs to understand to be engaged.

I noted some participants discussing how they found writing in English particularly

difficult. Aisha, who said outright that she “hates writing” mentioned an essay assignment where


she repeatedly got negative feedback about her writing, particularly concerning the structure

(such as the thesis statement) and the instructor highlighted so many errors she felt the instructor

told her it was all wrong. She could not make sense of the expectations of the writing and was

left with the impression that she was incapable. Khadija expressed frustration with a requirement

to write responses in an online discussion board, and her suggestion to improve it was to

undertake the activity in a way that would simply avoid writing. She explained that she thought

some people learn by writing and others do not, and she was one who did not, so she wanted the

instructor to remove the writing portion. These participants did not see writing as a skill they

could develop, but rather something they were terrible at or wanted to avoid. Laila expressed

frustration with an assessment that limited the number of sources she could use, likely a way to

encourage weaker readers to summarize them successfully. However, because she was a stronger

reader, she found this limited her creativity, which in turn made it less enjoyable. So there were

issues with the writing being both too challenging and too simple.

Although many of the incidents related to participants having challenges with reading or

expressing themselves in English, there were also incidents involving Arabic, their first

language. Wafa described an Arabic presentation where she was confident about the material but

speaking in Arabic made her particularly anxious. Despite feeling well prepared, and her

confidence in presenting in English, when she presented for this assignment, she was unable to

find the right words and drew a complete blank. When the instructor asked her what had made

the presentation challenging, Wafa said, “I told her, I understand everything. I know what it's

about. I didn't . . . I couldn't find the words in Arabic.” She was disappointed in her performance

and was distressed about her poor Arabic. However, unlike the other participants who mentioned

challenges with English and wanted to find ways to avoid it, Wafa talked about recognizing she


did not have strong Arabic skills, and she wanted to work on improving them. She knew it would

be a valuable skill in the workplace to be comfortable in English and Arabic. Despite speaking

Arabic at home, she had taken all of her primary and secondary schooling in English and

struggled with using it in an academic setting. She was distressed about her weak Arabic

because:

Language is culture and I don’t want to lose that. How would I be able to teach my

children? You know, in the future, my grandchildren?

I found it particularly noteworthy how emotional Wafa was, and how the negative experience

had caused her to see a much broader implication of her weak language skills. She wanted to

take responsibility for improving her Arabic in a way that poor performance in English language

skills did not result in the same reaction from other participants.

Language issues were common for most participants. I found that some participants

stated outright they did not like to read or had language issues when it came to expressing

themselves. However, others seemed more indirect and instead wanted to avoid doing something

they were not yet proficient at so they could avoid the feeling of being unsuccessful. Either way,

these issues were clearly affecting their ability to engage with learning at university.

Engaged: Contextualized to their world (4/19).

I established that some participants thought being able to connect their learning to UAE

culture and environment was a key support for their engagement. In particular, the incidents

involved participants finding information or being able to relate information to their context. For

example, in one project in a course (the focus of both Badria’s and Hamda’s incidents),

participants interviewed their parents and grandparents about traditional remedies and then

designed experiments to test the remedies’ efficacy. Their discovering new knowledge connected


to local traditions seemed important. For example, this is what these two participants had to say

about the relevance of this assignment for their localized context:

When we presented to the teacher, she was like shocked because she’s from another

country and we are from the UAE, so she want to know like a new knowledge, a new

information about this thing. . . . It was like interesting information also. Not for only our

group, other groups and other class. Like also when they were presenting it, we were like

listening and careful. We want to know more about it. (Badria)

Some hospitals they say, “No you don't have to take these medicines because we don't

know the source or we don't know what’s the benefit.” But now I feel interested to

understand why we are taking or eating these medicines. (Hamda)

Although the experiment to find out the efficacy of treatment could conceivably be about any

medicine, the way in which this assignment helped the participants generate new knowledge

about something traditional and familiar to the participants and foreign to the instructors was

something they valued highly.

Afra discussed an extracurricular project she was involved in, and how it helped her

personalize information from her major, realizing how it applies to her home city. One of the

reasons the project was engaging for her was because it helped her envision how she could

contribute to help fix a local environmental issue. She discovered the importance of cleaning up

a local waterfront area called the Creek:

If we don’t care about it, there will be no tourist. And Dubai depends on tourist. So many

factors that led me to the Creek and led me convinced them that Creek is really

important. Yeah, it is Dubai. It’s like my city. So I have to go to the beach and . . . it was

a bad, it was a dirty beach. There were many fishes that were dead. Totally dead. It was


like oh, my God. You just walk, and all of them are dead. . . . So I was so shocked, dead

fishes. Then I saw it. I was so shocked . . . it’s like my first time learning about

environmental effect and the importance of it. Importance to study these things. (Afra)

In these incidents, participants described a meeting place that supported them to link the

theoretical information they learned in class (which frequently used other countries and cultures

as examples) and applying that knowledge to their local context as very meaningful.

This concludes the personal themes related to both engagement and disengagement. The

engaged themes included the importance to participants to have personal choice in the topics

they were studying; and that they could apply what they were learning to their own context.

Many of the engaged incidents resulted in participants being exposed to a subject area that for

the first time was meaningful or achieved some kind of personal development. In many cases

these experiences were examples of learning supplementary to the task they were involved in,

helping draw attention to the importance of incidental learning to engagement. The disengaged

themes centred around participants being disinterested because they could not see the value or

relevance of what they were studying and because they found the language requirements,

particularly for reading and writing, too challenging.

Next I will consider the social themes, starting with teacher characteristics and actions,

followed by factors related to families, peers, and groups.

Social

In the next section, I offer my review of the engaged and disengaged social themes which

were behaviours participants believed that other people demonstrated to support their

engagement.


Engaged: Teacher’s characteristics and actions (18/19).

The most prevalent theme emerging in this area unsurprisingly focused on the teacher’s

characteristics and actions, both those that helped and hindered engagement. I will break the

factors into several sub-themes below.

Feedback (8/19).

I noted that positive feedback from the teacher on individual performance and on how the

participant could improve was essential to some participants’ engagement. For Jamila and Reem,

it was important that the teacher took individual notice of them and found ways to recognize

their skills, challenge them in distinct ways and encourage them. Salma and Zainab found it

motivating that the instructor had simply noticed and commented on an improvement in their

work or noticed a strong skill of theirs. Fatima and Wafa discussed examples of how they

learned when the instructor showed their work as a model for other students but also gave them

critical ideas on how they could improve it. Hessa and Reem explained how it was indispensable

for them to receive feedback on preliminary work which helped them perform better in the

summative assessment.

In contrast, instructor feedback given on work could have a discouraging effect on

participants, even as part of an engaged incident. Sheikha spoke about being intensely engaged

writing a paper that went beyond the assignment requirements but was only given feedback to

shorten it, which was not enough detail to be helpful. She ended up quite frustrated and made the

decision not to take the input and submitted a paper well over the word length, feeling the

instructor had not appreciated the depth to which she had understood the topic. So, although

feedback can support engagement, it demands the right timing and the right amount, and the


feedback must recognize the effort of participants. These factors are a balance that participants

wanted instructors to navigate.

Enthusiasm (6/19).

Many participants (Mariam, Hind, Laila) identified a teacher's passion and enthusiasm for

their subject area as critical to their own engagement. Mariam mentioned that when the instructor

was working hard to be energetic in class, she felt she also needed to be energetic and “meet her

there.” Hind stated that the instructor’s passion for the subject encouraged a sense of wonder for

her, making her want to understand and find out why the teacher was so passionate about the

topic. Laila also found it motivating when the teacher was an impassioned expert in their subject

area. It became a challenge for her to be both specific and correct in what she put into her

assignments, knowing the teacher was a specialist and would notice even minute errors. She was

motivated to try to learn something about the topic that was unknown to the teacher.

In a similar vein, it was essential to some (Hamda, Moza,Wafa) that the teacher could

connect the course material to the real world. For example, Moza found the instructor’s ability to

tell stories on the topic based on their personal experience encouraged her engagement, as it

made the material about other cultures more concrete. The teacher’s ability to make connections

between the material and the real world of the participants supported their engagement.

Encouraging independence (6/19).

Participants appreciated the teacher encouraging the participants’ independent

development of ideas. For example, Aisha and Hamda liked it when their teacher encouraged the

students to come up with ideas of their own for project topics, rather than working from a

preformulated list. Afra and Laila valued a teacher who supported them in developing and

investigating their own ideas, rather than simply telling them correct information to recall. Jamila


was motivated by a sense of wonder when the teacher challenged students with questions that

might be unknown or beyond what they were required to know. A slightly different angle in this

respect occurred with the teacher that Moza mentioned. Because of her respectful stance, she

could analyse issues that were sensitive or uncommon in UAE society in a way that helped Moza

understand them but did not offend her by pressuring her to agree with them. An instructor’s

respect for students’ independence, opinions, and knowledge as a starting place arose through

this theme.

Guidance with flexibility (4/19).

A balance of flexibility and guidance from the instructor stood out for several

participants. For example, Khadija thought structured, clear tutorials which gave her information

on how to complete her assignment were helpful. Amna and Laila found the flexible,

intermediate deadlines their teachers gave throughout a project were vital to their staying on

track and helping them to produce high-quality work. Overall, participants liked the balanced

approach when the instructor offered guidance on how to undertake the task but allowed

flexibility on deadlines.

Approaches class as learning together (3/19).

Three participants (Badria, Mariam, Moza) spoke about how they appreciated the teacher

taking an approach that positioned students and teachers as learning together, rather than the

teacher being the only source of knowledge. As an example, Mariam said the teacher “came to

their level,” made a point of genuinely trying to understand what students were trying to

communicate in class, and at times even changed her opinion based on information students

provided. It was important to her that the instructor tried to understand and respect the


perspectives of students in the class rather than dismissing them or not understanding them,

which presumably she felt often happened. Mariam explained:

Like there is respect, yet she is removing that barrier, you know. . . . You know “I'm not

only a teacher. I'm not only here to boss you,” like “say whatever you want because

thinking about it, we can also choose on something,” you know. They learn from us. So I

love teachers that they accept, you know. Like the they’re be like, “Oh, you’re right.

You’re right.” And they go like “Okay, as she said” and then continue. It’s not like we're

the expert, and then you're the dummies that you don't know anything. It's like that you're

almost more equal. (Mariam)

Badria appreciated working with her instructor to make sense of the results of an

experiment she had designed. She also appreciated the support from the instructor trying to help,

but not knowing all the answers. She found it appealing that she and the instructor were working

together to find the solution, rather than the instructor being the source of all the knowledge and

her role being to remember it. I found participants reported that by breaking down the structure

of the teacher as the source of knowledge and the students as the recipients, instructors were able

to support their engagement.

Disengaged: Teacher characteristics and actions (11/18).

Although the teacher’s characteristics and actions featured heavily in supporting

engagement, it also featured prominently in disengaged incidents.

Expecting more guidance from the teacher (7/18).

Many disengaged incidents occurred when the participants believed the teacher should be

giving them more guidance on what to do, or conversely, when participants pushed back when

the instructor expected them to be more independent than they thought they should be.


In a teacher–student relationship at an undergraduate level, there is a level of negotiation

when a teacher wants the student to learn the topic broadly, and the student in some capacity

focuses on what is required to pass the assessments for the course. I found in many of the

disengaged incidents, participants expressed a mismatch in expectations. They did not

understand what the instructor wanted from them, did not think what the instructor was

expecting was reasonable or did not seem to recognize that the instructor’s activities would work

toward students understanding the topic independently. For example, Amna explained her

expectation of guidance:

I love the subject, but when I have someone to guide me. As long as I have this person.

Some teachers, do not really, cannot really help you, because they don’t give you the

needed information. They just say: “Do it. You’re a university student.”

Interviewer: Did you understand what to do?

Amna: No. We didn’t until we’ve read many research papers and then we started to

understand what’s going on.

Reading many research papers to build an understanding could have been exactly the instructor’s

expectation of independence, but Amna thought it was unreasonable and insufficient guidance.

Another example came from Badria, who expected more guidance from the instructor. She

described an assignment where all the students went to see the instructor individually for

feedback on a draft. After talking with her classmates, she believed the instructor gave them all

similar feedback: that they had not yet appropriately connected the information to the UAE

context. Badria said that information was not in their readings, and so they could not figure it

out. The instructor was pushing them to apply information from one context to their own, and

Badria perceived that the instructor was unfair in not telling them the correct answers.


Furthermore, Badria could not figure out why the instructor did not just tell the students the

information in the first place instead of forcing them to figure it out independently.

Hamda was very clear that she wanted more guidance from the instructor. The instructor

taught using an approach with a lot of questions and answers and discussion. Hamda explained:

I don't like someone asking me many questions, where the answer will be the

explanation. Like for example. You ask me a certain question. Then I give you the

answer. Then you ask me another question related to the answer. And going like this. . . .

And the answers are the explanations are for the whole lecture. It will be really hard to

understand. Because I will answer something. My friend will give another answer.

Everyone will choose their answer. So it will be very hard to understand which answer is

the right one. How can I collect all these answers together to understand the material?

She continued:

Really what I can understand? And sometimes if you are asked to do groups and explain

this material. We will explain it, but it's not how the Ms. explains. It's different. I like to

understand from the Ms., not from the girls. (Hamda)

She wanted the instructor to summarize the information for her, give her keywords, and “give the

explanations in a straightforward way,” and only use student discussion to provide possible

examples.

Jamila’s desire for more guidance involved an instructor who did not allow in-class time

for practice examples and exercises. She explained an example in which the instructor gave an

elaborate demonstration on the board with many pieces of information that she found difficult to

follow, and then urged students to “note it down” and “not forget,” followed by “any questions?”

She was unsure how to approach asking questions about it, let alone practice independently, and


so she felt stuck and frustrated. She believed if there were more time in class for practice

exercises, it would help her to get the guidance she wanted when she needed it. She explained an

interaction between the teacher and the class, and how she tried to navigate getting what she

wanted:

Jamila role playing: Teacher: Did you understand?

Class: Yes.

Teacher: If you have a question, just ask me.

Jamila to the interviewer: Like how can we like ask a question if we didn’t try it by

ourselves? And when I tried to tell the professor that the way he explain the things for us,

it doesn't suits me. He said, well, this is my fault now. And I’m like I don’t want to say

anything more because my grade is on edge [in this] class.

So while Jamila is searching for more support, she senses that she is not meeting the instructor’s

expectations, and given the power relationship of the instructor being the one to grade her, she

pulls back on looking for support.

Although the first few incidents in this theme indicate the instructors want the students to

be more independent, in other incidents it seems participants do not think their instructors’

expectations on assessments are fair. Zeinab was frustrated with an examination that she felt had

many irrelevant questions and did not allow her to get credit for what she had learned:

Even if I do my best, it would not be recognized. Absolutely not. That was like, it was an

absolute feeling that I had because I did try. I tried so much. (Zeinab)

She seemed confident that she had understood the material but felt the assessments did not allow

her to get the grade she felt she had earned. Another participant, Jamila, thought that the


assessment questions were tricky and not connected to the lessons, almost as though the

instructor were intentionally trying to confuse the students. For example:

It was like in words and he didn't specify the thing he want from the question. Like “does

this happened to this,” or like “something would happen if you do like this?” Not

calculate. Okay. Which part this is, from which lesson that I took such a thing? Like the

statistic are all similar lessons. Like how could I memorize thing from here, and thing

from here, and here? And I should like figure out which one is this? Like, I can’t. Like,

he’s just, like, confusing us a lot. (Jamila)

Another example involved Nadia, who described an exam in an accounting course which

she did very poorly on. She explained she found the classroom instruction was not making sense,

but students would not tell the instructor they did not understand. As the semester progressed,

she started relying heavily on YouTube videos and the textbook to figure out the topics that did

not make sense in class. She failed the exam, as did most of the class. There was a brief point

after the exam when the class attempted to give the instructor feedback that they were not

understanding. The instructor tried to modify her approaches, but it did not seem to help much

because her explanations were still too complicated, and the class went back to pretending they

understood.

From several of these incidents, it seemed to me that participants were viewing the

responsibility of working through challenging, ambiguous material as the role of the instructor

and not of the student, which caused tension in the teacher–student relationship.

Demotivated by feedback (4/18).

There were some instances of participants finding feedback from their instructors

demotivating, leading them to disengage. Afra described an experience when she got feedback


from the instructor about what she needed to correct but instead of it helping her learn, it

discouraged her and further, she viewed it as though the instructor was enjoying finding her

mistakes.

But you know, it’s maybe the treatment of the teacher that makes you think you are

stupid, or you don’t understand the thing. Even though you understand, even though you

can do it by your own and everything, but the way the treatment and the way she looks at

every mistake you do is a happiness for her. . . . I felt disappointed. I felt bad. I didn't like

the subject. . . . Maybe no good feedbacks make you feel sad . . . I was excited . . . what I

really was excited about, and then everything is like a disappointment which made me

hate the things. (Afra)

It is unfortunate to think the instructor is happy each time she finds an error, but Afra’s

perception and feeling are genuine. Rather than Afra seeing the feedback as an opportunity to

learn, she was demotivated by it. Another example of a participant demoralized by feedback was

Aisha. When the instructor gave feedback that her initial topic choice for a paper was not

suitable for the assignment, Aisha’s perspective was: “She don’t care about what I like. She

care[s] what she like.” The process of receiving negative feedback from an instructor seemed to

be disheartening for several participants, and they questioned the instructor’s motivation for

giving it.

Alienated relationship (4/18).

An instructor needed to maintain a relationship with the students, and if there was a crack

in that relationship, some participants were more likely to disengage or be discouraged. An issue

that caused a problem for the participants in the relationship was often a small comment,

decision, or action by the instructor.


Moza disclosed that an instructor made a discriminatory remark about Emirati women

and that ruined her respect for him as a teacher. He said that Emirati men were taking out loans

that were beyond their means to meet Emirati women's demands for expensive items. As such,

he said it was the Emirati women’s fault the men were getting into debt, which she found

offensive. She said that nobody attempted to correct him at the time, but she disengaged in class

discussions from that point forward, noting the power relationship meant she would not approach

the issue:

And at the end of the day, he is an instructor. We just wanna finish the course, get a good

mark, and move on. (Moza)

Afra had struggled when an instructor denied her request for flexibility on a deadline. It was not

so much that the instructor said no, but she said it in an insensitive way:

But sometimes she’s not sensitive, I think. Like I know it’s not your responsibility as a

teacher to care about me, or to care about my problems, but at least like some situations,

understand. You know? Some situations. Yeah, some situation, you want understanding .

. . you have to be little bit sensitive to us. Especially when we have something really

important. . . . You can refuse it in nicer way. (Afra)

After the instructor insensitively declined her request to attend an extracurricular event, she

thought was important, she shut down for the rest of the course because of what she perceived as

insensitivity. The student–teacher relationship is an important one for many participants’

university learning, and when there was a crack in it, disengagement followed.

Overall, the teachers’ characteristics and actions have a powerful impact on their

engagement and disengagement in learning from the perspective of participants. Teachers could

possibly support their engagement through positive feedback, enthusiasm, and encouraging


approaches, but at the same time they could hinder their engagement by not providing as much

guidance as expected, giving negative feedback and at times alienating the relationship with

students.

Engaged: Social supports—peers, family (13/19).

Family (8/19).

Many participants (8) indicated they received support or assistance from their family

members as part of their engaged incidents. As an example, Hessa, Laila, and Nadia said their

family supported them by listening to their ideas or asking about their experiences. Aisha and

Khadija explained that having sisters who were working, and so had expertise, helped them with

their projects. Amna sought historical information about the UAE that she needed for her

assignment from her father. Afra indicated that one of the reasons she wanted to succeed with

her engaged incident was to make her parents proud. So overall, family support for participants

in their engaged incidents may have been quite passive (like listening) or quite active (in helping

to seek out information), or perhaps even a motivating factor (to make them proud).

Peers (6/19).

Many participants (6) explained how having a group of interested and motivated friends

helped support their engagement. For Khadija and Reem, having friends in class helped them to

clear up misunderstandings or issues with concepts discussed in class or on assignments. Hind

went further when describing the need for these friendships and pointed out that the

encouragement from close friends in class motivated her to do better. Jamila found with friends

in class it made her want to continue in-class discussions even after class. Salma indicated the

family-like support from her peer tutors was essential and a key aspect of why she wanted to be

involved in the peer-tutoring program.


Mariam brought a further interesting angle to the importance of peers and was

particularly appreciative of an instructor who supported all the students in a large class to get to

know each other. She found it important to have supportive friends in class, but at the same time

she struggled to meet people. She found that an instructor who continually mixed students and

encouraged them to participate in discussions and debates helped her to make new friends and

find support. The reassurance of peers to help with understanding difficult material or just to

provide encouragement was clearly important, even though it was not always easy to establish

these relationships.

Engaged: The right mix of a group (9/19).

For a series of engaged incidents about coursework, finding a suitable mix of individual

or group work seemed to be vital for participants’ engagement. Khadija was particularly

motivated when she was able to work by herself rather than with a group because she was very

interested in the topic. She felt she would work more diligently on the assignment independently,

and her standard of work was higher than anyone else’s. Therefore, she did not want group

members to freeload and get an unearned grade, so part of the important factor for her being

engaged was working individually. Other participants mentioned choosing to collaborate with

other students with whom they had had a previous working relationship (Badria, Hamda,

Mariam, all upper-year participants). This familiarity allowed them to get the work done

efficiently and without group co-operation issues. Mariam explained she had an established

group of six classmates and they had a scheme for forming groups for group work. They had

agreed on grouping depending on the requirements to work as pairs, threes, or as a larger group

of six. She explained it was a group of students she could trust to do their work and this evolved

because of the social “loafing” issue described by Khadija. Mariam stated:


I can trust myself. In a university college, I prefer doing my own work because I in [sic]

people I cannot trust them because there were people that didn’t work. And then there are

people that are responsible, then I like doing work before and getting it done. But now in

this major, since I knew that they are my friends and I know them since like two years

and a half now, so like, you know, we have that base. We can trust each other that

eventually their work is going to done and everyone is going to do everything equally, so

that's why I prefer group work. Like when you are overloaded, you want your work to be

divided. You don’t want to do the whole thing alone. So I think the key is to have to find

people that you can trust. (Mariam)

I found that group work in some of the engaged incidents, particularly with the upper-year

participants, had high levels of trust, co-operation, and well-defined and understood roles.

Some earlier-year participants described groupwork as a part of their engaged incidents

as well, although the positive aspects seemed to be less about how they co-operated and worked

well together, and more about how they had managed to divide the workload equally and

everyone did their part (Aisha, Reem, Nadia), which meant things went well. Taking Nadia as an

example, she mentioned in her engaged incident that the team members were all given roles as

part of the assignment and since they were clear on what to do and they all took their role

seriously, they were able to achieve a high grade (an essential outcome for her). So for some

participants earlier in their program, group work was deemed successful when the group

members shared the task equally and all participants took responsibility for their work.

The level of interest and knowledge of the rest of the group members seemed vital to

some participants’ successful engagement. Amna mentioned that initially she had not found her

group project topic very interesting, but the enthusiasm of one of her group members was


infectious and helped her to find it thought-provoking. Afra, who was participating in a research

group of students, faculty, and professionals, felt freer to express herself in this group compared

with groups of students at her level in the program. When she participated in group work in her

coursework, she felt her peers were reluctant to disagree or correct her, out of fear of hurting her

feelings. However, in this mixed group, everyone had different expertise, and she felt free to say

whatever she thought without concern for anyone’s feelings, knowing she would be corrected if

someone more knowledgeable thought she was wrong. Afra’s experience, which was in an

extracurricular project, combined with the other students’ experiences with coursework projects

and assignments, indicated that only a small number of groups became high-functioning learning

groups, and more often became used to dividing up a large task.

Disengaged: Social supports—peers, family (4/18).

Family and friends featured in some of the disengaged incidents as negative forces.

Participants reported two negative responses from mothers. Khadija’s mother was frustrated that

she was spending so much time while she was at home on her laptop, thinking that she should be

able to finish her studying at the university. Khadija felt the pressure from her mother to spend

less time on her schoolwork while at home but then in class was regularly told by instructors she

was expected to spend more time outside of class studying. Nadia reported a similar situation

where her mom was frustrated by the amount of time she was spending studying, mainly because

it was not resulting in high marks. Nadia’s incident was about a class she was failing because she

did not understand the content in many lectures. She explained the tension:

And my mom told me too. You are working hard and you’re studying a lot and you’re not

helping me in cleaning the house and stuff like that. You don’t do your chores in the

house and . . . Why don’t get like even B or C? Why getting F? Like you studied for


nothing. I was like, mom, don’t like pressure . . . It is not like I’m not the . . . . She said

then go to the director of the college and tell her like this, this and this. I said to her,

mom, she’s kind of like a new teacher. I mean it’s kind of hard. (Nadia)

Both Khadija and Nadia seem to be balancing differing expectations between what their

mothers think about the time they are spending on schoolwork, and the amount of time

instructors expect. It is noteworthy how rarely participants reported reaching out to family or

friends when they were struggling with disengagement.

Disengaged: Dysfunctional groups (3/18).

I found common factors in some of the disengaged incidents when a group of students

needed to work co-operatively and for some reason they did not. Some had disinterested group

members, which affected the work. For example, Hind was part of a group paper writing project,

and the group members tried to meet early to prepare, but they often ended up chatting and

laughing and avoiding the work. This enjoyable procrastination meant the group left the paper

too late to be able to complete it well. Moza had a problem with her group, when there were a

couple of group members who did not participate as they should have. This meant she carried

more than her share of the workload for the planning and written part of the assignment. When it

came time for the group members to work together on the final product (a volunteer placement),

these two members were disruptive and unprepared, and Moza was embarrassed by their

behaviour, ruining the experience for her. Participants often reported issues with uneven group

work participation or interest hindering their experience.

This section concludes the social themes that participants related about what other people

did to support or hinder their engagement. They mentioned the supportive characteristics of the

teacher, factors that made group work function well, and support from peers and families as


positive influences; issues with teacher guidance, feedback and relationships, discouraging

family members and dysfunctional groups as influences led towards disengagement.

Wishlist

The final portion of the ECIT interview asked participants to create a wish list of what a

future teacher could do to support their engagement with learning. I sorted the wishes into three

main areas: (a) instructor behaviour, (b) assessment, and (c) curriculum. The total number of

items and the participant frequencies of wish-list items are shown in Table 6.

Table 6

Wish List Items with Frequencies

Focus Items Frequency

Teacher characteristics and actions 40 18

Relational aspects 17 12

Teaching approach 14 12

Language 9 6

Assessment 22 13

Assessment type 9 9

Autonomy related to assessment 7 7

Assessment timing 5 5

Curriculum 4 4

Teacher characteristics and actions (18/19).

All but one participant made wishes concerning things that an instructor could do to help

them be more engaged with their learning. The participants spoke about three main themes: (a)

instructor relational approach, (b) instructor language use, and (c) instructor teaching approach.

Instructor relational approach (17/19).

Most participants offered wishes about minor relational or technical aspects that they

wished instructors did to support their engagement. Sheikha at first just described this as wanting

instructors to “be polite,” meaning that she wanted instructors to show an interest in whether or

not the students were interested. She said it did not seem to matter to some instructors if they


held the attention of students in the class, alluding to the fact that she wanted instructors to spend

time building rapport. Wafa asked that instructors take the time to learn and use names, as it

helped her feel as though she “existed” in the class. Sheihka went one step further and asked that

instructors notice good work and encourage it (not just correct students who are off-task or not

working hard). Amna, Reem, Wafa, and Nadia all wanted instructors to take the time to listen

and empathize with student needs, particularly for extensions if there was a legitimate reason. As

Nadia stated, “And kind of being, like, little bit gentle with students. Because we students

leaving our families aside and many things and come to university to study, not because of

playing.” Generally, participants wanted their instructors to build rapport by connecting with

them, empathizing and responding to them as individuals.

Some interesting examples emerged as participants discussed technology and its positive

or negative potential for connection. Aisha had an embarrassing experience when she got

negative verbal feedback on some writing in a one-on-one discussion during class time and was

upset that other students could overhear it. Therefore, she wished that feedback on writing be

given online, because it was private. Jamila mentioned frustration when instructors did not

respond to emails (the example was a time she was looking to meet the instructor outside office

hours), perhaps further indicating wanting to feel heard.

Several wished for a balance between their instructor being strict and being what they

perceived as unkind. They explained they wanted the instructor to show that some things

mattered to them, that they had standards and they expected the students to be able to meet them,

but that they were not “just mean” (Wafa, Afra, Nadia). Afra spoke of a past instructor who was

strict but explained the reasoning behind the things she was strict about, so it helped the class


understand the reason why, and it was not just the teacher choosing to be mean. The desire for

friendliness as well as high expectations was apparent.

Afra described an instructor she had that had made it safe to disagree with her,

welcoming negotiation and differing opinions, even on sensitive topics. Based on this, she

wished for future instructors who would let her disagree with them without punishing her. She

stated (discussing the previous instructor):

She was not very sensitive with giving me bad marks if I’ve said something against what

she is thinking, against her principles, against her. Like I have my own principles, she

have her own principles. So some teachers . . . take it sometimes so personal, which

annoys me. Like I can’t say my opinion. I have to shut up. I have to [be] very lovely to

the teacher, even though . . . I’m not agreeing with her. (Afra)

Afra believed she has had instructors with whom she could not safely voice her opinion, or her

opinion might not be respected, and she wished for openness in the future.

Mariam described a wish for an instructor who meets students “where they are at.” She

described herself and her classmates as “baby chicks” who are “just being born” and the

instructors, particularly new ones to the UAE, as the “big ones with the PhDs.” She said:

We understand that they’re smart enough, but they make us also feel that we’re so, too,

like you know, we’re like stupid sometimes. I know that they don't mean it because

they’re just fresh and they just want to give information out, but that's also for us like,

what she said? What he's saying? Like what’s that? So I think in a way they need

background information. (Mariam)

She had an experience with a new-to-the-country, inexperienced instructor whom she

found very difficult to understand. After telling the instructor she did not understand, the


instructor treated her as though she was not smart. A couple of participants (Afra, Sheikha)

wished that their instructors had more expertise in their field in the UAE, because then they

could draw examples from their research or experience in a way that was relevant.

There was some disagreement between wishes, as far as the instructor reminding students

about due dates and tasks and breaking large assignments into smaller parts. Amna wanted

instructors to give reminders on due dates regularly, and give students staged assignments with

intermediate feedback check-ins on what needs to be improved, rather than giving them a one-

time assignment submission. However, Laila found this kind of approach frustrating and clearly

did not want to be “babied” in such a way. Laila gave an example of an instructor who trained

the class to become independent and self-reliant, and after that experience, she found the other

approach insulting.

Instructor language (14/19).

Many participants made wishes for instructors to be conscious of the level of difficulty of

the language they spoke and keep their explanations as simple as possible. Several mentioned

instructors using language that was more challenging than seemed necessary, and this meant that

some students in the class could not understand (Hamda, Wafa, Nadia). Mariam requested

summaries of critical ideas from lectures, so the ideas discussed are clear (rather than her taking

notes). Hamda and Wafa preferred that instructors attend to visual learning styles, possibly

because of issues they have had understanding the instructor’s language or reliance on lecturing.

Moza, Mariam, and Amna said they found videos were a good way to help everyone understand,

perhaps because the imagery helps comprehension and interest beyond only verbal explanations,

or that it helped to be able to play it as many times as needed to understand. Hamda expressed

frustration when instructors gave her activities where they expected her to read information in


class and then summarize it. She said she was too slow a reader to be able to handle this type of

activity and would prefer the readings be given in advance rather than in class. There was a wide

variety of wishes concerning the instructor being conscious of the level of language they were

using and expecting from students.

Instructor teaching approach (9/19).

Many participants expressed their wishes for instructors to use active and innovative

approaches in their classes to maintain engagement. Jamila explained she sleeps when an

instructor lectures from the beginning to end of class, and stated:

Like okay, they innovate lots of technologies and like they innovate phones and so on,

they even reach to the moon, but they didn’t thought [sic] like a new ways, like to

innovate new ways to having lectures? (Jamila)

The country and the university are both continually investing in projects related to innovation,

but she would like to see more innovation in her learning environment. Mariam analyzed that

lecturing as a strategy is not necessarily suitable in the PFU context:

It’s not like we're spoiled or we're not smart enough, but you know, different places had

different strategies. Like you know maybe from where he came, that strategy work on

them, but it doesn't work on us. (Mariam)

Afra and Khadija both mentioned they are sometimes hesitant but appreciate it when an

instructor makes them participate in class, and therefore wished for instructors to require

participation; for example, calling on students directly, or having students work in groups and

then calling on the groups to answer questions. Zainab and Moza wanted instructors to use more

activities alternately with lecturing.


Many wished for class activities that required students to work in groups and get to know

each other. Wafa made a point of saying she was grateful when the instructor put students into

groups (rather than making them choose) for class activities, and then gave them a couple of

minutes to introduce themselves to each other. This activity gave her the chance to get to know

others in the class and decide whether she would like to work with them in the future. Hessa

requested the instructor help the students in the class get to know each other and not assume that

everyone knows everyone else. They thought taking time as a part of the class activities to give

everyone the opportunity to introduce themselves helps with group work in the future. Nadia

suggested that on the first day of class, instead of just handing out the syllabus and letting

everyone go, take the time to do some introductions so everyone can get to know one another.

She would also like the instructor to ask about students’ preferences and what they want out of

the class. Overall, there were wishes to consciously build a learning environment in which

students get to know one another to be able to learn together.

Some participants requested teaching approaches that connected the material to the UAE

or practical activities that they might use in future work. Jamila stated:

We want to get engaged more in practical things rather than just working in [on] papers,

then we are shocked in our work when we like first attending for the job, and they're

saying do something that[is] not related to paper writing work, and I'm just oh, I didn't

have an idea and such thing in the university. (Jamila)

Badria and Afra mentioned the importance of going on field trips off-campus to see the type of

situation they might see in their future workplaces, and how they would like to see more of these

incorporated. Finally, Salma, who spoke about her involvement in extracurricular activities for

her engaged incident, wanted to see higher participation from students at field trips and off-


campus events, because these experiences had been so vital to her learning. In general,

participants wished for active teaching approaches that connected with real-world, UAE-based

situations, and the opportunity to get to know their classmates.

Assessment (13/19).

Thirteen participants made wish-list requests relating to assessment. These wishes related

to three main areas: (a) types of assessment, (b) autonomy related to assessment, and (c)

assessment timing.

Assessment type (9/19).

Participants expressed desires about the clarity, type, or style of assessments that

instructors might give them in the future. Amna and Sheikha both requested clarity, when the

instructor tells us “what you really want” (Amna), suggesting that assessments from her

perspective were not transparent and asked one thing, but wanted another. They also wanted to

make the assessments achievable for the students and sought clear assessment criteria with a

rubric.

There were some wishes expressed on the format of quizzes and exams, which had

recently changed following a new policy. Through an administrative decision, all students took

all exams in an online format (instead of paper-based), and multi-section courses had to use some

common assessments between sections. Hessa, Nadia, and Reem all expressed problems they

experienced when writing online exams: they lost work through computer glitches, they found

the style of question problematic (not being able to show work in math), and small errors in

spelling which meant they got questions incorrect because the computer automatically marked

the quizzes. Badria was frustrated with the common assessment for her course because she felt

the instructor had rushed to cover all the topics that would be on the joint test, and she preferred


that they could slow down to really learn the material rather than rush to keep up with a faster

teacher on the other campus. However, Hessa explained that she did not feel empowered to

disclose these negative impacts with anyone other than students:

And, like, other students have like problems with the whole process . . . but they're scared

to talk about it. One student said that she did, like, tell the student . . . centre or something

about the issue but they said that it's the new thing still we can't do anything about it you

have to deal with it so I was like I can't go and like tell my problem because it's not that

important. (Hessa)

So, some of the participants had issue with changes to assessment policy (moving assessments

online, and common assessments between course sections) but they did not feel empowered to

discuss the issues or feel that instructors would hear their complaints.

Several participants expressed wanting assessments more authentic in form. Afra wanted

exams on real-world applications of material rather than on memorization. Hind wanted more

learning that linked to trips off-campus, as it helped her connect the ideas more easily than

abstract lectures. Moza wanted to see more exciting formats for writing, using an example of a

writing assignment when she was to write a letter from the perspective of a historical figure, or

another where she produced an iBook; she found these shifts in format made the topic much

more interesting than the usual research paper. Although not quite the idea expressed by the

others, Jamila requested that writing is kept to a minimum in assignments because "What’s the

purpose of writing if no one will read? This is my point of view,” suggesting that she would like

to see a greater connection with a real-world audience for her assignments.


Autonomy related to assessment (7/19).

Several participants wanted to have instructors offer students more choice and control

over assessment, mainly when related to the topic they were to undertake work on for projects or

papers. There were several reasons for this, related to creativity and interest. Sheikha stated:

Don't limit creativity. Because like everyone in different personalities, they have a

different vision and something. And I always use the example of the seasons. Everyone

looks at the year in different ways. Like people love fall and people love winter so don't

limit people. I find in our university they limit us a lot. . . . We could do better if we

choose our topic. (Sheikha)

Amna, Zeinab, and Hessa wanted the instructor to let them design their project or select their

topics to keep it more interesting for them. Aisha and Reem wanted the freedom to choose

projects that played to their strengths and helped them build different skills. For example, they

explained that some students are good at presentations and others are not, so if students could

choose the assessment method, they would select one that matched their skill set. Badria wanted

a combination of both, when she could choose her topic and a way to show she had learned it,

because “we are big enough” to manage it. Many thought that choosing topics from a list was not

choice enough, and said they wanted the opportunity for more input on how they could

demonstrate what they had learned.

Assessment timing (5/19).

Several participants wanted changes in the way assessments were spaced out over the

semester. So, for example, Amna and Badria questioned why all the courses have the

presentations and projects due at the end of the semester, and why not have some of them

earlier? Jamila stated that at the end of the semester:


It’s like all like just submit, submit, submit . . . I’m not gonna learn from such a project if

you’re like just rushing me and want me to submit things that you want to hear from me.

Like I want to learn as well, like not just giving you the things that you want to hear. We

want to feel that we are engaged in our projects, not just doing the projects for showing

up. (Jamila)

So, participants suggested balancing assessments between courses, rather than heavily loading

the end of the semester. Hamda did not mind that projects were at the end of the semester, but

she asked that instructors give a full explanation of them at the beginning (it seemed most of the

time it happens mid or end of the semester). Participants wanted instructors to be conscious of

the semester as a whole, and know they were involved in other courses which have similar

deadlines, so keep that in mind for their course schedule.

Curriculum (4/19).

Some wishes involved the program curriculum. Salma, who was a transfer student,

wanted changes in the general education program. She explained that at her previous university,

students got to choose from a list of 20 or so optional courses, and they would select ones they

thought were interesting. This selection gave students a better attitude in the classes than she was

seeing in her classes at PFU, she reasoned, because they had chosen them. She discussed a

general course that she had taken, and since all the students were required to take the course,

some felt forced to be there and did not find it interesting. This situation made it hard for her,

because she was interested and wanted the other students to give it a chance. She said:

So it's set in the program. So you didn’t get to choose the only topics that put you

passionate about, you just have to go with the university forcing you to go that way.

(Salma)


Laila found that, in her program, she was taking too many courses that she saw as too

broad and not entirely related to her major, which she saw as problematic. Then there were other

courses she thought were mainly related to her major, that were so dense they were rushed. She

was not able to learn the material as well as she'd like to, because the instructor covered so much

information with no time for all of it to “sink in.” She stated:

There are a lot of it. I mean we do learn a lot, but then it's not about what we learned in

class but what you learn after the course is over. So I mean if the information is too

dense, what are we going to learn about it? We only get study for the exam. Then nothing

is going right to our head. (Laila)

She was concerned that for the topics in her major, she was doing too much rushed, surface

learning just to be able to write exams, but would not be able to remember the information after

she completed the course. So, she wanted a slower pace for the courses related to her major.

In summary, it seemed participants were looking for ways to be able to spend more time

in courses and working on assignments related to things they were interested in, which was

conceivably their major.

The wish-list items varied from discrete seemingly minor behaviours that a teacher might

undertake, to broader issues such as assessment policy. There seemed to be frequent discussion

of the need to modify content and information for the UAE context, which included attending to

the second-language environment, and treating students respectfully and with empathy.

The purpose of this section was to draw together the emerging themes from the data. A

variety of themes related to personal and social factors for both engagement and disengagement

were reported, as well as the wish-list items. Finally, I complete the cross-comparison of the

incidents.


Phase 3: Cross-comparison of Incidents

The final phase of my thematic analysis consists of a cross-comparison of incidents. In

this process I will place the incidents into (a) antecedents (things that happened before), (b) the

incident itself, and (c) the impacts. The engaged, disengaged and wish-list themes will be

summarized to bring together all the data.

I undertake this part of the analysis cautiously because the focus of the study—

engagement in learning—is inherently complex, and the perspectives of participants vary.

Engagement can be cyclical and build momentum, meaning with the right conditions in place, an

incident of engagement can happen and the impact could be positive, which might lead to further

engaged incidents. However, it can also work in the opposite direction with the wrong conditions

in place leading to an incident of disengagement, with the participant withdrawing effort, leading

to further disengagement. Therefore, it is an oversimplification for me to present the data in

linear form, as I need to conjecture what the antecedent-incident-impact relationship is when the

relationship, even in the interviews, is rarely seen as linear by the participants. Nevertheless, it is

valuable to see some aspects of the incidents through this lens.

Antecedents

The antecedents, or what needed to exist before either engagement or disengagement,

related primarily to the participants’ interest level, or the instructor. When explaining factors that

participants believed kept them personally engaged, they often reported their interest in the topic.

When participants had some choice in their topics or were supported to find something that

interested them, they were in a much better position to put time and effort into the learning.

When participants reported disengaging because of a lack of interest, it was for varied reasons

including finding the topics irrelevant, repetitive (something they had learned previously), or


finding the material irrelevant in the UAE context. Participants reported disengaging when they

could not ascertain the relevance of coursework, or when assignments were seen almost as

busywork to produce something that the teacher wanted. Issues with the level of language

showed up strongly as a precursor to disengagement. Participants reported struggling to

understand the language many of their instructors used, finding it difficult to engage with

academic readings and complex textbooks, and many found writing assignments challenging.

It was clear that support or resistance from peers could be a forerunner to varying levels

of engagement. Having a group of motivated, interested peers was helpful in learning difficult

material independently from the instructor, as noted by Reem who created study groups or

Jamila who learned a lot from discussions with her peers after class. Being able to complete

group work with trusted, interested, enthusiastic members could shift a participant towards

engagement. For example, I point to the upper-year students who had found ways to achieve

groupwork efficiently. In contrast, turning to the case of Amna, who did not find her group topic

particularly interesting, she found a group member so enthusiastic that she engaged

unexpectedly. When groups functioned well, it is often a precursor to engagement.

However, having to work in groups where other members did not participate fully, did

not maintain a high standard of work, or did not do the tasks they committed to, was extremely

frustrating and could push a participant like Moza to withdraw from anything but compliantly

checking the boxes of the assigned work. Another example was Khadija who decided to

complete a group project by herself because she did not want to risk working with someone who

did not do a good job. Following this idea, some participants said they struggled to get to know

other students, and they were not often given opportunities to build relationships that might lead

to productive teamwork. When participants needed to work with fellow students—either as part


of the assigned coursework or as informal support—it was clear that the social group and how

well it was functioning could be a precursor to positive or negative engagement.

The participants’ reports showed family played a minor role as an antecedent to their

level of engagement. Given the context, all participants were unmarried and living with their

parents and siblings, or newly married. When participants spoke about their experience of being

engaged in their learning, many talked of their family members taking a passive, supportive role

in terms of listening to their ideas, although sometimes they were more active when more

experienced siblings offered direction or assistance, or when an assignment required participants

to seek traditional knowledge that only older family members would know.

When discussing the experience of disengagement, two participants recounted that their

mothers were frustrated with them for spending so much time at home doing homework and so

discouraged their efforts. The participants seemed to frame this more as a misunderstanding by

their parents and said it had a somewhat neutral impact on their engagement, neither helping nor

hindering it. Further, there was an absence of support from family when participants discussed

being disengaged, perhaps hinting that they were choosing not to look for help at home in these

cases.

However, from the perspective of the participants, the person other than themselves who

had the most capacity to affect their engagement was the teacher. Participants engaged with the

instructor took a relational approach to their teaching that was empathetic, encouraging and

flexible. When a teacher was enthusiastic, connected information to the UAE, and respected

students’ knowledge and culture, participants responded very positively. When the instructor

approached the class as a group that was learning together, breaking down the teacher–student

hierarchy, and genuinely listening to students and their perspectives without dismissing them,


engagement followed. Keeping in mind the cultural distance between expat teachers and Emirati

students, participants related wanting to communicate their perspective knowing that it would be

foreign to their teachers and could perceive when the instructor was open to it or not. There were

small interactions that could easily have occurred without the instructor knowing about them, but

which instantly broke the participants’ trust in the teacher, leading to disengagement. These

might have been comments about the country, the way they deducted marks or gave feedback, or

their level of sensitivity to a request for a change in deadline. These “unheard” communications

were often a precursor to disengagement.

The amount of guidance that teachers gave or the level of independence they expected

from participants could be foundational to engagement or disengagement. Developmentally, it

might be reasonable to assume that students early in an undergraduate program might struggle

with the expectation they need to complete a lot of work independently, but it would typically

shift with time as they progress. However, this was not the case with the participants in this

study. In recounting times when they disengaged, there were calls for more guidance from

instructors, from participants in second to fourth year, across all programs. Participants reported

struggling in many situations when instructors pushed them to do things independently such as

complete readings on their own, make inferences about the applicability of material, or undertake

practice activities without supervision. When participants noted that a teacher encouraged

independence, it seemed it was important that the instructor respected the participant's

independent opinions, perspectives and knowledge, rather than that those instances when they

pushed participants to undertake work independently. Many participants in the study would have

gone to public schools in the UAE, often lauded as being very teacher-directed, which may relate

to why participants desired so much guidance. So while there seemed to be a strong interest from


participants that instructors respect their independent ideas, there was less interest that instructors

should expect independent work from them.

Impacts

In terms of the impact of engaged incidents, participants reported various enhanced and

positive personal developments, such as increased confidence, overcoming shyness, learning to

handle anger, developing empathy, patience, and communication skills as the effects of their

engagement. They discussed their own excitement about the undertaking of and learning new

things for the first time. They explained that when instructors allowed them to make choices

about the work they were undertaking, it helped to develop an interest in the topics they were

learning. When the information helped participants connect to their context, they were able to

build a nuanced understanding of the UAE in relation to the world. It is clear to see that the

impact of being engaged resulted in the development of a variety of positive affective attributes

in participants.

Incidents of disengagement rarely led to introspection but rather to participants

suggesting things the instructor should do differently, from their perspective. Examples included:

assigning easier or less reading or writing, using straightforward language, offering more

guidance, or using more class time for supervised practice, field trips, or activities. Even when

looking at the general incident types when participants reported their experience with being

engaged, only a few connected it to a teaching approach; most acknowledged the elements of the

coursework assignment as the reason. When participants discussed their experience of being

disengaged, more shifted and acknowledged the teaching approach. This suggests a tendency of

participants to describe their reasoning for engagement as something they had authority over, and

disengagement as something the teacher caused.


Wafa had one of the most introspective reactions to a disengaged incident. After

performing poorly on an Arabic presentation, she spiralled into frustration with herself about

how damaging this was to her future in work and as a parent and grandparent—it was as if her

native language was lost. However, most other participants who discussed performing poorly

were more likely to mention that the assessment was unfair or the instructor was too hard to

understand or wanted something inappropriate. Introspection about the reasons for

disengagement is an important quality that could be vital to support learning.

Feedback from the instructor influenced the participants’ engagement both positively and

negatively. Positive feedback from the instructor on work that participants had completed well,

or an instructor noticing a participant’s effort in class were factors mentioned that kept

participants motivated. At the same time, feedback that drew attention to work that needed to be

improved often caused strong emotional reactions, and participants reported being upset with the

instructor and demotivated as a result of it, at times even questioning the instructor’s character or

intentions in offering feedback. It seemed as though when some participants were pushed to

improve through feedback, they reacted with very little individual agency, and rather blamed the

instructor for not offering enough guidance or just wanted the instructor to give them a decent

grade. The intention of feedback is presumably to help students learn but instead caused many

participants to withdraw, which is problematic.

Based on the experiences reported in the incidents described above, a strong impact on

engagement is based on a participant’s willingness or ability to work as a part of a team. Several

disengaged incidents related to group work going poorly, with social “loafing” students not

undertaking their tasks seriously. This resulted in an uneven effort among the group members,

and a high level of frustration for the members who had to do more work than their share. Even


when group work was part of an engaged incident, it was considered successful when

participants were able to divide up work evenly, and everyone participated. Only a few examples

of group work became genuinely collaborative, but when it did happen it encouraged teamwork

skills. Afra’s example of working in a multidisciplinary research group with students, faculty,

and ministry staff was an example of independent, engaged work as a part of a team, which

resulted in her developing a range of skills. However, many examples demonstrated that

engaging in group work did not build teamwork skills.

Peer support, previously mentioned as an antecedent, could also be considered an impact

of engagement or disengagement. Peers groups provided informal support in some of the cases

of disengagement particularly as resources to help understand the material when participants did

not understand their instructor. Further, family members in two cases discouraged the homework

participants were undertaking particularly if they were not achieving high grades, presumably

discouraging engagement.

Chapter Summary

In this chapter I presented the findings from the study in three phases, as suggested by

Holloway and Schwartz (2014). I started by giving a general description of the data set, which

including the demographics of the data and the participants’ definitions of engagement. I

included information about the frequencies of the incident types, with 19 engaged and 18

disengaged incidents. Next, I reported details about the three types of incident focus that

participants selected, which were: (a) coursework assignments, (b) teaching approaches, and (c)

extracurricular activities. Following that, I reported on the major themes, which I will summarize

below.


Participants emphasized that to be engaged, they needed to see the value of new material

to their own lives and when they could not see the relevance to their personal sphere or the UAE

context, it was their primary reason to disengage. They expressed wanting a manageable amount

of autonomy and choice in how to approach their learning, but not so much that they felt lost.

When courses required them to approach topics in a traditional academic manner (for example,

unguided deep reading and lengthy paper writing), participants disengaged, often because of

language-related challenges. Many described expending a lot of effort reading and writing but

still not understanding the material or seeing improvement. They were conscientious in trying to

produce the work the instructor asked for, but when they could not understand or were given

negative feedback, their reactions were quite emotional. Overall, it was a common perception

that instructors did not appreciate how challenging the material was for them or had

unreasonably high expectations.

When a supportive teacher-student relationship formed, however, it was fruitful. A

teacher building connections, offering positive feedback, noticing good work, and being

enthusiastic about their topic were motivating factors. It was important to participants that the

teacher did not behave as the solitary source of knowledge, rather the teacher learned from

students and championed students to develop their own ideas. Participants sought achievable,

fair, authentic assignments when the instructor was clear about what they were looking for and

gave students some independence over selecting their topics. An effective setting for engagement

included a teacher offering a firm structure for learning but at the same time being flexible and

understanding the students’ perspectives and needs. When an instructor misinterpreted the

students’ perspectives, perhaps by assuming cultural stereotypes were true, behaving as though

their viewpoint was superior, or not showing flexibility when students asked for it, it could


irrevocably ruin the relationship, leading to disengagement. Further, if an instructor offered little

guidance, or feedback that was perceived as negative, the relationship could be damaged beyond

repair.

Another important factor that participants connected to their engagement was when

learning the academic subject material allowed them to develop personally (for example, build

confidence or skills) or experience something interesting for the first time that was relatable and

understandable. Although this type of development (for example, building confidence) was not

likely connected directly to the course’s intended learning outcomes, it was a key part of the

experience of engagement.

Finally, participants’ family and friends could play a supporting role in engagement,

particularly when there was someone who would listen to their experiences and occasionally

offer advice. Sometimes, family and friends did not understand the effort required for academic

success, and this left participants in a difficult position trying to balance the expectations of their

social circle (not to spend time and effort studying) and their teachers (to spend significant time

and effort studying).


Chapter 5: Discussion

I collected the experiences of the 21 female Emirati undergraduate students studying at

PFU, a federal institution in the United Arab Emirates, to understand their perspectives on what

helped or hindered their engagement in learning. In this chapter, I discuss the overall findings

and their connection to existing research and theory. I demonstrate the ways in which this study

supported current research and added new elements to broaden the understanding of engagement

in learning in the UAE setting. I then discuss the implications of this research for practice,

focusing on instructors and program developers in this context, and make recommendations for

further research.

I have chosen to recount a narrative of one of the participants, Nadia, to start the

discussion. Nadia’s experience carried many elements that were similar to the most frequent

themes of other participants, so her experience is helpful in illustrating the key findings of the

study. In the data analysis, the participants’ incidents of engagement and disengagement were

reduced to their elemental qualities to find common features. However, recounting Nadia’s

complete experience and considering it as a model case will guide the discussion of the

engagement in learning as a whole.

Nadia was a second-year student in the Management Information Systems program. She

had spent a semester in the language preparation program, as had about half of the participants.

She described an engaged student as someone who wanted to participate and share their ideas in

class and listen to the opinions of other students. Part of her interest in coming to university was

not necessarily about gaining knowledge or aiming at a particular career; it was primarily for the

social experience of making new friends. She was fascinated to learn the opinions of other

students even if they were different from hers. For her engaged incident, she discussed her


participation in a group project when they volunteered in the community. She noted that all five

students in her group were excited to work together and focused on getting a good grade. They

chose to volunteer at a place that supported children with disabilities. Their role was to organize

some activities and games with the children. She had never spent time with anyone with a

disability before. It “opened her eyes” and the experience “reshaped her thinking” about people

with a disability. She enjoyed working with the group members doing something good for

society and ended up getting so involved that she forgot about the grades for the project. She was

particularly enthusiastic that a graduate from the same university was working at the facility and

showed them around. She said that after the experience, she could see herself working there as

well. She struggled to recall any parts of the assignment that were written but could vividly

remember giving a presentation to the class about her experience. She brought up pictures on her

phone of the volunteer placement activities and could clearly articulate how it had changed her

personal views.

Her entire demeanour changed when she described her disengaged incident, shifting from

excited to discouraged. She discussed an accounting course that she found problematic. She

received her first F grades ever on the first two tests, despite “working harder” in the class than

in her other subjects. She was dispirited, but she continued to put in the effort and did not give up

hope; she believed she would do well on the next tests. She spoke to her advisor about dropping

the course but was frightened that it would delay her graduation, so she did not. She empathized

that the instructor teaching the class was new to the UAE and teaching here, and was busy trying

to finish her Ph.D. Nadia found her method of teaching very difficult to understand. The

instructor would review many slides and then ask if everyone understood. The students in the

class would say “yes,” although nobody in the class honestly comprehended. She would study


the textbook and look up videos to try to learn the material outside the class but was still quite

confused. Nadia discussed a poignant time in the course after the second exam when the

instructor was upset to see such low grades and seemed to come to the class searching for ways

she could help them. Nadia said the students shyly tried to tell her about some of the problems

from their perspective such as finding the material delivery confusing and fast (“When she

explains, maybe to her, she can understand. But to us, no. Students, no. We cannot.”). The

students had a hard time hearing and found the format of the online exams challenging.

However, from her perspective, the instructor “just voided them” by telling the students there

was no flexibility for those details to be changed. Nadia talked about how “students here” really

liked to have a lot of different activities in class to help them understand, but this was not how

this instructor taught. She respected that the instructor had a high level of knowledge in her

subject, but she wanted someone to help the instructor learn how to teach more effectively.

Outside the class, Nadia had pressure from her mother to study less and help more around the

house. Her mother thought it was fine to study if she was getting Bs or Cs, but if she was going

to get Fs, she was studying for nothing. Overall, in her disengaged incident, Nadia painted a

picture of a teacher who did not understand the academic preparation needed for the class, the

level of understanding of the students, or the family pressures they felt. However, rather than

being angry about the experience, she was very respectful of the instructor, knowing she was

new to the country and a bit overwhelmed with the new job, and she wanted her to be given

external support to be a better teacher.

Nadia’s engaged experience exemplifies many of the themes discussed in the findings

chapter, including how important it was for her to experience something for the first time,

develop personally, be allowed to take some agency to choose what she was studying, and be


able to contextualize what she was learning to her world. She worked with a group of supportive

peers to independently achieve a common goal, the assignment challenged her thinking, and she

came to some new understandings. Importantly, she did not run into language barriers.

Her disengaged experience parallels many of the themes that arose from the data. She had

challenges with the particular teacher and was expecting more guidance than she received related

to the teaching approaches used, and she was confused by the speed at which the instructor

spoke. Nadia believed the teacher dismissed the feedback that she and her classmates tried to

communicate, and while she was respectful of the teacher, she was demotivated by the

experience. Finally, she received challenging feedback from her family, who did not understand

the effort required for academic success, and this left her in an awkward position to try to

balance the expectations of her family (to spend less time and effort studying) and her teacher (to

spend more time and effort studying).

When Nadia discussed her wish list items, it was clear she felt misunderstood by some of

her instructors. She wanted them to be more empathetic and gentler with students and understand

that they were there to learn. She raised the point that she wanted the instructors to get to know

the students better and respond compassionately to their requests. She was often left confused

when instructors wandered off-topic or lectured about abstract topics, so she requested that

instructors use simple language with concrete examples and a teaching style that included

activities rather than lectures as she found this more effective.

Although Nadia’s case exemplified many of the themes, she did not highlight some

common ones. Many other participants underscored the importance of a supportive teacher-

student relationship for their engagement: a teacher who built connections, offered positive

feedback, noticed good work, and was enthusiastic about their topic. It was also important to


many participants that the teacher did not behave as the sole source of knowledge but preferably

learned from students and championed students to develop their ideas. There was a

disengagement theme that Nadia’s story did not touch on, which related to a lack of interest in

the subject. She appeared to continue to be interested in the topic of accounting, despite the

challenges she experienced; however, for many other participants, the lack of relevance of the

material surfaced as a reason to disengage. I continue to draw on ideas from Nadia’s story, as

well as other participants, as I compare the findings to the scholarly literature.

Comparison to Relevant Scholarly Literature

Briefly, this study sought to find the factors that female Emirati students perceived to

affect their engagement with learning in their undergraduate degree program. Participants

defined their perception of what it meant for them to be engaged, and then selected two personal

experiences to discuss in depth: a time they were engaged, and a time they disengaged with

learning. They included the personal and social factors they perceived to support their

engagement or lead to their disengagement with learning. I was interested in factors that may

have been connected to the broader cultural context. In the following section, I compare my

findings of what engagement meant to participants with how engagement is defined in the

literature. Next, I propose a model to compare the remaining results to the relevant research.

Meaning of engagement

Although definitions of engagement in the literature vary depending on the focus,

elements of nearly all definitions from participants reflected characteristics seen in the research.

For this study, I used the definition of engagement by Bernard (2015), as follows:

A dynamic process marked by a positive behavioural, cognitive, and affective state

exhibited in the pursuit of deep learning. This process is bound by contextual


preconditions of self-investment, motivation, and a valuing of learning. Outcomes of

student engagement include satisfaction, a sense of well-being, and personal

development. The iterative experience of engagement occurs within a given educational

framework influenced by a broader sociocultural context. (p. 118)

Participants in the study emphasized that being engaged meant being behaviourally compliant

and respectful in the classroom, which meets Barnard’s ideas of a positive behavioural and

affective state. Other participants defined engagement as the positive product of an interaction

between the students in the class, the instructor, and the material. Although not identical, their

description of engagement connects to Barnard’s inclusion of a positive affective state, and the

preconditions of self-investment and motivation. Further, some other participants described

engagement happening when they were empowered to make autonomous decisions about their

learning, which connects again to Barnard’s ideas of the positive product of behavioural,

cognitive, and affective attitudes combined to pursue deep learning. Turning to additional

scholars’ research, Bryson and Hand (2007) discussed that student engagement lies on a

continuum from disengaged to engaged. The participants in the study supported this idea,

describing engagement as a dynamic and changing state rather than a static disposition, as they

discussed a wide variety of external influences that shifted them to the edge of both conditions

(engagement and disengagement). Astin’s (1984) theory of involvement showed the importance

of extracurricular activities in supporting student success. In the study, two participants defined a

highly engaged student as one that is participating in extracurricular activities and they used

extracurricular activities (a campus peer-learning volunteer program, and a faculty-led research

project) as the basis for their engaged incidents. Therefore, although I did not give the


participants the theoretical definition of engagement, they generated their examples to define it in

ways that aligned with the literature.

Supports and Barriers to Engagement: A Model

A starting point to continue the discussion is to consider a quotation from the literature

review and consider that "every student’s classroom engagement is invariably a joint product of

his or her motivation and classroom supports versus thwarts” (Reeve, 2012, p. 152). To review:

motivation is the intention, engagement is the action, and a variety of environmental incentives

can affect a student’s shift from intention to action. In the engagement research, motivation is

often seen as a precursor to engagement (Christenson et al., 2012), but motivation is only a piece

but not the whole explanation. In the definition used for this study, “contextual preconditions of

self-investment, motivation, and a valuing of learning” (Bernard, 2015, p. 118) are required for

engagement.

Engagement is a multidimensional construct, and research tends to be concerned with the

environmental factors that can be implemented to improve student success. Engagement

“represents aspects of student behaviour and institutional performance that colleges and

universities can do something about” (Kuh et al., 2007, p. 11). So, presuming that the goal is to

“do something” to improve engagement with learning in this context, the model starts by

considering concepts related to motivation—primarily value and efficacy expectations—and then

looks more broadly at the supportive or unsupportive aspects of the environment. The model

builds on the idea that when students “find positive value in a learning goal or activity, expect to

successfully achieve a desired learning outcome, and perceive support from their environment,

they are likely to be strongly motivated to learn” (Ambrose et al., 2010, p. 5).


The data in this study was based on the self-reported critical incident experiences of both high

and low engagement in learning by female undergraduate students in a federal university in the

UAE. Lawson and Lawson (2013) noted that engagement varies across a number of settings and

researchers should focus on finding what influences students’ engagement choices. As such, the

results offer some contextualized “environmental levers” that, based on the perspective of the

participants, are the contextual factors which, when manipulated, changed their engagement in

learning in this context. As such, I am proposing the model in

Figure 1 that I use to discuss the findings.

Figure 1

Contextualized Model of Engagement Levers

Motivation is generally seen as an internal, private, and unobservable individual

psychological process, while engagement is the external, action-oriented, observable expression

of motivation (Reeve, 2012). Based on this premise, at the centre of the model I have placed a


female symbol, to signify the individual female student, surrounded by concepts connected with

a common motivational theory: Expectancies-Value theory (Eccles & Wigfield, 2001; Wigfield

& Eccles, 2002)(EVT), and radiating outside are the environmental factors that increase or

decrease engagement based on my interpretation of the findings. As such, I use the ideas of value

and efficacy (from EVT) to discuss the four environmental factors that were essential in my data:

(a) accessible language, (b) positive instructor-student relationships, (c) a balance of

independence, and finally (d) personal development and relevance. The following sections of this

chapter discuss factors at the centre of the figure, and then focus on the external “environmental

lever” arrows.

Model centre: Personal experience

In the proposed model, expectancies and values are at the centre of engagement,

emphasizing the need to consider motivation as the internal state of a person. In the EVT of

motivation (Eccles & Wigfield, 2001; Wigfield & Eccles, 2002), “Perceived expectancies for

success and subjective task values both determine motivation and performance on achievement

tasks” (Tibbetts et al., 2015). Put more simply, a student needs to answer “yes” to two key

questions to be academically motivated: “Can I do the task?” and “Do I want to do the task?”

(Barron & Hulleman, 2015). Since academic motivation is the intention that happens before the

action of academic engagement or disengagement, I use these theoretical ideas to make sense of

the “environmental levers” this study found which encouraged the female students to say “yes”

or “no” to the questions of being able and wanting to do the tasks.

Expectancies.

Expectancies are the task-specific beliefs that a person holds about their abilities (Barron

& Hulleman, 2015). Expectancies draw heavily on the theory of self-efficacy, which refers to a


person’s belief that they can perform a required course of action (Bandura, 1977). Bandura

posited that people use four sources of information to form their sense of self-efficacy: (a)

performance experiences of their own, (b) vicarious experience of others, (c) verbal persuasion

from a trustworthy other, and (d) physical and emotional reactions (Oettingen, 1995).

Further, there are two kinds of belief with efficacy: (a) outcomes expectation (for

example, I believe if I study I will pass the test), and (b) efficacy expectations (for example, I

have the skills to study well enough to achieve an A on the test) (Eccles & Wigfield, 2002).

Individuals’ expectation of success is a strong predictor of their eventual achievement of

academic outcomes (Wigfield & Cambria, 2010). Expectance and self-efficacy are an interesting

lens through which to consider the study findings, mainly because many incidents across several

themes hint towards participants having low self-efficacy, and low efficacy expectations.

Value.

Eccles and Wigfield (2002) described four components that make up the subjective value

of a task to a person: (a) attainment value, (b) intrinsic value, (c) utility value, and (d) cost (p.

119). Attainment value is concerned with how undertaking the task would support a person’s

self-worth and identity; intrinsic value is related to the enjoyment the person gets from the task;

and utility value is derived from how well the task relates to the person’s current and future

goals. The fourth point, cost, is considered the negative aspect of engaging in the task, in terms

of the amount of effort or time it will take. Subjective task value is an additional intriguing lens

with which to examine the findings, as many themes suggest that participants found low utility

value, high cost, and little intrinsic value when they were disengaged, and the opposite when

they were engaged.


Cultural Crossing.

Hatherley-Greene (2012a) used an analogy of border crossings to explain the cultural

context of the teaching environment in his study of men in their first year of a foundation

program in Fujairah, UAE (a small emirate on the east coast). In the analogy, male students

needed to leave their “safe space” at home in a predominantly Arabic culture and cross a border

into the “contact zone” that is the learning environment at the college. Instructors enter the

“contact zone” and oversee a predominately “Western” teaching and learning environment. Then

after class, both students and faculty “retreat” to their “safe zones” in their different home

cultures. This model acknowledges the intercultural meeting place that is the context of this

study, albeit with somewhat aggressive language (contact zone, safe zone, retreating). Based on

this idea, I chose to add a layer to the model to represent the requirement of female students to

undertake a cultural border crossing to engage in learning in their undergraduate studies.

Although a cultural context is often shown as an all-encompassing layer that might be visualized

as a broad circle around the whole model (see Kahu, 2013a), I chose to represent it as a constant

permeable zone for female students to navigate through between motivation and engagement in

undergraduate studies.

Objects for engagement.

Recall that I asked the participants in this study to choose examples of times they were

engaged and disengaged in learning, and their cases fell into three broad categories: (a)

coursework, (b) teaching approaches, and (c) extracurricular activities. Consequently, I have

included the positive variations of these categories in the model: (a) applied or relevant

coursework, (b) active teaching approaches, and (c) extracurricular opportunities.


Model levers: Environmental factors

Although motivation, a cultural border crossing and the objects for engagement are

central, the key findings of the study are represented by the arrow “levers” of the model. I

propose that intentionally building expectancies and value connections might support increasing

motivation and subsequently, engagement. I now discuss the arrow “levers” of the model with

this in mind.

Accessible language.

Concerning participants’ perceived ability to undertake academic tasks, there was a

considerable lack of confidence related primarily to language. Perhaps the essence of this pivotal

finding is best explained by a quote from the participant Hamda: “I can’t be engaged with this

material if I don’t understand.” In the context of the university, which is the focus of this study,

the English proficiency of many students is different from many other traditional university

classrooms. For example, the minimum IELTS (International English Language Testing System,

a standardized language examination) entrance score at the institution was an overall band score

of 5.5, while at the University of Calgary it was 6.5 for most programs, and 8.0 for Education

(Calgary, 2019). An overwhelming majority of students were non-native English speakers, and

the levels of language preparation and academic literacy varied widely in a classroom depending

on many factors, including the students’ high school experience in the private or public system,

or taken in primarily English or Arabic (Freimuth, 2014). Given the voluntary recruitment of

participants for this study, it is plausible that only the most engaged female students were likely

to self-select to participate in the interviews. If they were experiencing language issues to this

extent, similar problems are likely to be exaggerated for the less-engaged female students.


A variety of participants expressed low efficacy expectations when they did not believe

they were able to produce the work that was being asked of them at least partially because of

their language skills. There was a perception from experience that they were unlikely to be able

to complete the required work and had almost given up trying. Many said that they did not “like”

to read or write, and at times it was unclear whether they were not interested in the materials or

just felt uncomfortable being unable to produce what was required of them. I suggest that

deliberately building success expectancy such as female students’ self-efficacy alongside

appropriate language support could improve engagement.

Persuasion from a trustworthy other may help to build self-efficacy (Oettingen, 1995);

however, many participants had the impression that instructors did not understand how

challenging reading and writing was for them so did not recognize their efforts. The participants

tended to place the accountability on the instructor to simplify the material, remove requirements

to write, or reduce their expectations of reading. Further, there were examples of highly

emotional reactions to feedback from instructors when participants believed the instructor was

picking on them. In engagement literature, high levels of challenge are often positively

associated with engagement (Strati et al., 2017), but that does not seem to be reflected in these

student perceptions. Particularly with the incidents in this study, perhaps low self-efficacy

combined with weaker academic skills resulted in many participants believing that they did not

have the skills to perform what was being asked of them when tasked with a challenging

assignment.

I use another lens from the engagement (rather than motivation) literature to consider the

reported academic problems female students experienced with language skills in terms of Tinto’s

(1988) theory of integration. In this theory, a student passes through stages of separation,


transition, and finally integration in the college experience. In the transition stage, the student has

not yet acquired the norms and patterns of behaviour expected at the institution which need to be

navigated for them to succeed. Behaviours such as struggling to understand difficult concepts,

working independently, straining with reading or writing may be considered normal parts of the

student experience from the perspective of the institution and/or instructors, who expect students

will acquire the skills. Melguizo (2011) queried Tinto's theory, stating it neglected the influence

of factors external to the institution. It is plausible to place the responsibility for disengagement

on the students for being unmotivated or having language skills that are too weak to transition

into university. However, this would neglect the external factors of this context: students have

been accepted into the university with a wide range of academic preparation, and the government

is fully funding the cost of their tuition and books. The power of engagement research is that

engagement is a multidimensional construct, encompassing dimensions of influence from the

individual student and the institutional context. It is clear in the data from the participants that

they struggle to integrate in the university experience because of the language barrier, and they

need more and varied support from the institution, particularly their instructors, to help them to

succeed despite the language challenges they reported.

The institution programs expected graduates would be able to communicate effectively in

both English and Arabic. Most of the critical incidents for both engagement and disengagement

centred around courses in English but one disengagement incident, as noted by Wafa, was based

on Arabic. I will expand on this case because it was so starkly different. Although most language

challenges with English hinted that participants did not have the skills and wanted the instructor

to change their expectations; in Arabic, Wafa saw her poor performance as a threat to her

identity. She imagined the future and saw herself as an unfit grandparent because her Arabic was


weak. Communicating effectively in Arabic had a high attainment value for her, connected to her

social role in her family in a way that communicating in English did not reflect. With this threat

to her identity, she reported independently undertaking work to improve her Arabic skills. From

this, I hypothesize that perhaps performing well in English is not connected to female students’

identity and that increasing engagement might come from helping female students to make closer

value connections.

Balance of independence.

From the data in this study, participants expressed a preference for independence and the

expected roles of teachers and female students that in some cases went unmet. In a traditional

university environment, new undergraduate students would be experiencing independence in a

variety of ways beyond the set curriculum (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005); for example, living

independently, entering into romantic relationships, or undertaking part-time work. All the

participants in the study lived with their parents or husband, and only one had a part-time job.

Participants in this context are not experiencing a move towards independence in many aspects

of their lives like similarly aged undergraduates in traditionally researched contexts such as the

United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom (Leach, 2016). You may recall Amna’s

engaged incident, where she learned how to convince her father to allow her to go shopping

independently for the first time without her brother or family chaperoning, something that would

often happen long before the fourth year of an undergraduate program for most students. As

another example, it would be highly unlikely female students would be involved in a romantic

relationship unless they were engaged to be married, and they would not be living independently

or with roommates; rather, they would be living at home with their parents and family. So, while

there was a clear communication from the participants that they wanted more independence and


autonomy in their learning environment, it was only a short distance before they felt they were

expected to be “too independent” by their instructors. In the participants’ narratives, there were

frequent examples in which they expected a dependent relationship with the instructor

particularly in a higher education context. They wanted frequent guided practice, feedback, and

encouragement and were frustrated if the instructor did not fulfil their expectations. At the same

time, participants expressed an often-unmet desire for independence, when they wanted more

autonomy and choice. Perhaps the key idea for this study is the recognition that participants

perceived the issue: they both crave independence as they develop as young adults, but they are

heavily dependent on teacher guidance to achieve it.

Hammond (2014), an expert on culturally responsive teaching approaches, noted that a

disproportionate number of culturally and linguistically diverse students are “dependent learners”

because of the educational inequity they have experienced. She stated that they grapple with

becoming independent learners:

Not because of their race, language or poverty. They struggle because we don’t offer

them sufficient opportunities in the classroom to develop the cognitive skills and habits

of mind that would prepare them to take on more advanced academic tasks. (p. 14)

Although Hammond is speaking from a different context (K-12 teaching in the United

States), there are similarly dependent learners evident in this study. Many female students in the

current study will have come through a public-school system that has not adequately prepared

them for the independence that is expected by their university instructors who are typically from

a different context, where expectations of independence are higher. It makes sense, therefore,

that female students are confronted with the challenges of shifting away from being dependent


learners, and it is an important finding of this study that more developmental opportunities to

encourage independence could help.

The data suggested a tendency of participants to describe their reasoning for engagement

as something they had authority over, and disengagement as something the teacher caused. This

is an interesting finding, particularly in terms of the literature on locus of control. In Rotter’s

(1966) theory, locus of control relates to how much control a person believes they have over the

events that happen in their lives: a belief they have a high level of control would be an internal

locus of control, and a belief that factors outside their control affected the events in their lives

(such as powerful other people or fate) is an external locus of control. Locus of control is usually

seen as a stable trait in a person (either learned or related to personality) (Horst & Jacovidis,

2018). However, by investigating engaged and disengaged experiences by the same female

students, it seems that the same participant regularly showed characteristics of an internal locus

of control when they were describing their experience of being engaged, and an external locus of

control when they were describing being disengaged. When considering locus of control in a

culture outside America (where this theory was developed) “cross-cultural comparisons suggest

that the meaning of control varies by cultural norms and values, and thus the moderating effect

of culture deserves greater attention” (Cheng et al., 2013, p. 153). So, this study suggests that

further investigation is needed on how to support female students to develop an internal locus of

control related to their learning, particularly when they are disengaged.

It is unlikely that it was the intention of the instructors to expect an unachievable degree

of independence from female students, or to intentionally give them too little guidance. This is a

key finding to understand in particular for program and course design, that learning experiences

must understand the context and be designed to scaffold female students to build their skills in


becoming independent learners over time, because they are not necessarily being built in ways

outside the curriculum (as in a traditional university) and students may have not been adequately

prepared by their K-12 experience.

Positive student-instructor relationship.

Over thirty years ago, Chickering and Gamson (1987) emphasized the importance of

frequent student-faculty contact both inside and outside class as the key to student motivation

and success in undergraduate education. Bryson and Hand (2007) found that relationships with

instructors could affect students’ level of engagement across tasks, courses, programs and their

overall experience of higher education. This study also suggests in the findings that a student’s

relationship to the teacher is the key to engagement. Although there is considerable research on

the key role an instructor plays in student learning, little has been applied in this context. A

recent study on student-teacher relationships at another federally funded UAE institution found

that caring relationships were more important to female students than a teacher’s methods or

content knowledge (James & Shammas, 2018), and this study finds similar perceptions. In a

study on pedagogical approaches in the UAE, Aboudan (2011) made four broad pedagogical

recommendations:

Content (examples and illustrations) that connect with Emiratis’ everyday lives; offering

opportunities for Emirati students to be actively involved in lessons; rewarding student

involvement efforts and engagement; and giving students greater responsibility in

planning and executing the learning process. (p. 133)

The findings of this study support these earlier findings in their entirety. Further, having

an instructor that is enthusiastic about their subject area is commonly aligned with increased

student engagement (Ambrose et al., 2010; Schwartz & Holloway, 2014), and within the UAE


(Fernandes et al., 2013; Hatherley-Greene, 2012b; Saafin, 2008). The findings from this study

also supported this position. In particular, it seemed that the enthusiasm helped students to find a

sense of wonder in unrelatable subject areas, or instructors who were passionate about their areas

could often make strong links to the UAE context. Although this study supports existing research

on the importance of the teacher, it adds a further nuance to the understanding of this context in

the following ways: (a) the importance of cultural humility, (b) attending to signals for

understanding/misunderstanding, and (c) the favourable and unfavourable consequences of

feedback.

Cultural humility.

In general, participants wanted their instructors to build a rapport by connecting with

them, empathizing, and responding to them as individuals. When teachers took the time to learn

their names and included activities that helped female students get to know each other, it was

much appreciated. Participants wanted their instructors to be flexible in understanding the

multiple demands on them from other courses and from home. They excelled when the teacher

set high but achievable standards and held expectations for them to meet them, but they were

also clear that they did not want the teacher to be “just mean.” The desire for friendliness as well

as a firm guiding hand aligned well with the idea of the “warm but demanding” profile from a

study in another UAE federal institution. This style was the students’ preference, and was

described by Hatherley-Green (2012b) as, “teachers who are emotionally warm and caring but

set high standards of classroom management, behaviour, and academic attainment, as well as

high expectations” (p. 7).

A key part of a teacher-student relationship involves effective communication. Given the

setting of the study, when the female students are primarily from one culture and the teachers are


from a wide variety of cultures, it is to be expected that there are issues related to intercultural

communication. Although Burkett (2016) provided evidence of UAE expat teachers having

strong knowledge of socio-cultural norms, there is evidence in the findings of participants having

experience with both interculturally competent instructors (Perry & Southwell, 2011) and

instructors lacking cultural humility (Hook et al., 2013). To elaborate, there were reports of

interculturally understanding or competent instructors, when participants identified involvement

with instructors that showed empathy and a curiosity about female students’ experience and

culture. There were instances of instructors that expressed genuine cultural humility, when a

teacher “came to their level,” assumed that they would learn from each other in the class or

genuinely tried to understand what students were trying to communicate despite language

challenges, and it laid a fertile ground for learning. In contrast, there were examples of the

culturally insensitive side, when some participants experienced instructors that acted as though

they were superior, assumed some cultural stereotypes about Emiratis were true, or did not show

empathy for the pressures on the students from their family. Although perceived negative teacher

behaviours are often recalled more intensely than positive ones (Strati et al., 2017), the examples

mentioned by participants described how a seemingly minor misstep or brush-off from the

instructor could be interpreted by students as intensely offensive and their reason to lose respect

for the teacher. Once an incongruence was perceived by students, the teacher-student relationship

was broken irreparably, and participants identified this as a primary reason for disengagement in

many cases not just from the assignment but from the course. The importance of this finding is

that while there were many reports of intercultural competence and humility from instructors, it

was not the common experience of participants. It is important for instructors to pursue a

culturally humble stance to help support student engagement.


Given the context, cultural insensitivity could be seen as a subset of a broader picture of

teacher non-immediacy and misbehaviour. Some literature connects student disengagement with

experiencing negative classroom environments that are caused by instructor non-immediacy and

misbehaviour. Immediacy is described as the verbal and non-verbal behaviour by a teacher that

helps reduce the perceived psychological distance between students and themselves as the

authority figure (Kremling et al., 2017). Teacher misbehaviour might be being offensive (for

example, making insulting, biased, or prejudicial remarks), incompetence (for example, lacking

basic teaching skills) or indolent (being unprepared, late in returning work, or deviating from the

syllabus) (Broeckelman-Post et al., 2016). Immediacy is correlated with learning, meaning that

as teacher immediacy increases, student learning increases. There are differences between

cultures on the strength of the relationship between immediacy and learning, but the direction of

relationship is the same (Zhang & Oetzel, 2006).

When considering the importance of the relationship to the teacher in connection to the

findings of this study, a culturally insensitive instructor could be described as non-immediate

(not reducing the psychological distance between themselves and students), misbehaving by

making offensive remarks, and incompetent because they are using unfamiliar teaching

approaches. For example, Nadia’s story at the beginning of the chapter described a content-

intense lecture from her accounting class, but one that is not atypical in higher education

instruction. She mentioned that the instructor did not understand how to teach “students here,”

suggesting that she sees the teacher as being incompetent for students from her culture. However,

her tolerance of teacher unpreparedness seemed particularly high, with an elevated level of

empathy and forgiveness for her instructor being otherwise engaged with her Ph.D. studies and

not always being organized for class.


Attending to signals.

Sonleitner and Khalifa (2005) reported that a challenge common to many instructors as

they start teaching in the Gulf is that they encounter unfamiliar signals from the class to indicate

understanding or engagement. There were a variety of cases in this study where participants

perceived teacher non-immediacy, when they believed they were communicating to the

instructor who did not understand, that they wanted more guidance, or that they thought the

expectations were unreasonable, but the signals seemed to be either ignored or unnoticed.

Returning to Nadia’s experience, when she felt the student requests were simply “voided” by the

instructor, is an example of this miscommunication. From my perspective as an institutional

insider, I understand that there are some aspects of a course that the instructor simply could not

modify for students because of institutional policy, but this was not communicated in an

understandable way to Nadia. Buskist et al. (2018) stated, “Learning occurs within a powerful

social context” (p. 56) and “how students perceive their teachers’ attitudes and actions toward

them will largely determine how they feel about their courses and their willingness to engage in

them” (pp. 56-57). In some cases, the perception that an instructor was not being empathetic was

possibly because the instructor was following the university procedures, but the participants

associated the responsibility negatively as a rigid attitude or inaction intentionally chosen by the

instructor. This behaviour, when female students are frustrated but outwardly tolerant of what

they felt was unreasonable teacher behaviour, aligns with what might be expected in a high-

power distance culture, where less powerful people are more likely to accept inequalities

(Prowse & Goddard, 2010). In the context female students are more likely to see the teacher as

an authority figure that should be respected rather than challenged (Prowse & Goddard, 2010).

Like a thread running through several incidents, there was an awareness that the instructor had


the power and it was not a student’s role to confront them on, for example, their teaching

approach, or their misperceptions of Emirati society. An important takeaway from this is the

need for instructors to listen empathetically to what female students are asking, and even if the

requests cannot be accommodated, the instructor’s positive attitude and understanding of the

requests is important. Clearly it is pivotal that instructors take the time to explain their reasoning

so the female students feel heard and not rebuffed.

Favourable and unfavourable consequences of feedback.

Targeted feedback is an effective way for teachers to enhance the quality of student

learning (Ambrose et al., 2010); however, the participants in the study had some mixed reactions

to receiving feedback: they found it demotivating as often as motivating. On the positive side,

when an instructor noticed and commented on good work and progress (and not only

misbehaving students), it was highly appreciated and memorable for students. However, a

finding from this study was that many participants found well-intentioned negative feedback

difficult to receive and tended to disengage because of it. It is important for instructors to

consider the effectiveness of their feedback to ensure that female students are receiving a clear

picture of how their work may differ from the goal (Ambrose et al., 2010). It is also important

that instructors recognize student effort and keep in mind how feedback, particularly negative

feedback, is communicated to students. One example is using a communication method that does

not embarrass the student in front of her peers, as happened to Aisha. The instructor was giving

her individual verbal feedback about areas she needed to improve with her writing, but she was

upset that other students might have been able to overhear because they were also in the

classroom. Another example is to communicate feedback in a way that acknowledges their effort

and makes it clear that the instructor is giving feedback to help female students improve and not


because they like to pick them out and find errors. Wass, Timmermans, Harland, and McLean

(2018) argued that emotions like annoyance, frustration, and disappointment are reported as a

reaction to assessment practices such as timing and weighting . They encouraged that “when

considering assessment practices, educators should ask questions about the emotional impact of

assessment to ensure learning while also taking into account the importance of student well-

being” (Wass et al., 2018, p. 1). There were many examples from the data when students were

confronted with a standard that they had not yet achieved and were being given formative

feedback by their instructor; rather than being motivated to reach the standard, they either did not

believe they had the skills, thought the teacher was unduly picking on them, or believed that it

was the teacher’s role to make the ideas simpler. The study suggests that instructors should

closely consider the purpose of their feedback, the setting in which they are giving feedback and

should monitor student reactions. It may also be helpful to communicate the growth-oriented

purpose of feedback and building female students’ self-efficacy when they have not yet achieved

the standard.

Personal development and relevance.

In many traditional university settings, the economics of the student-institution

relationship is quite different from this setting. For example, students usually pay high fees to the

institution and may be taking an undergraduate degree with the expectation of being able get a

better job (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005) or for a personal goal related to learning. In this

context, however, students are fully funded by the government to attend university, and social

and familial expectations combined with personal or professional goals guide the students’

decision to undertake a degree (Engin & McKeown, 2017). Certain tension surrounds the

purpose of a university degree. Students’ motivation to complete may include securing social


status, becoming an important person, making family members happy, and performing a duty to

the country outweighing the traditional economic goal of employment or personal development

goals related to learning.

Although more women than men pursue higher education in the UAE, the completion of

their studies does not always translate to working. Although the number has been increasing over

time, in 2017 only 32% of Emirati women were participants in the labour force (Sanderson,

2019). In comparison, the Canadian labour market crested 32% women in the early sixties. This

low participation rate in the labour force is attributed to many factors. One factor is that Emirati

women tend to prioritize their role of wife and mother over career goals, particularly when they

have young children. Further, an Emirati woman’s openness to working is related to their role

models growing up, which varies between families (Dubai Women Establishment, 2018). Given

these differing incentives for study and future work in relation to many other contexts, it is

plausible that students enter their programs with ideas about the purpose of studying that are at

odds with program design focused on employability.

Relating the purpose of pursuing a degree back to EVT, program designers and faculty

members may make assumptions about the motivational reasons (attainment value, intrinsic

value, utility value, and cost) which female students attach to pursuing an undergraduate degree,

and that the students may attribute very different motivations for the pursuit of the degree. For

example, when female students say they lack interest in the topics in the class, they may be

saying they cannot see the value of the material and are not prepared to invest the cost of the

persistence required to undertake challenging tasks. I suggest that in this context, with a mosaic

of goals related to achieving social status, becoming an important person, making family

members happy, and duty to the country combined with the lack of financial investment and low


workforce participation by women, means that students may assign a very different “task value”

to pursuing higher education than their teachers might assume. This is important because

understanding the value that motivates students is the key to encouraging engagement.

Another lens by which to consider a lack of interest in the material as a reason to

disengage is from the perspective of relevance. For example, when female students disengage

because they are not interested, they are viewing subjects as lacking utility value (believing that a

task does not relate to the person’s current and future goals), and the perceived cost (effort

required) is too high. I suggest that at a curricular level, a closer connection and relevance to the

UAE is needed to help increase engagement. For example, Mariam spoke of having to learn

about example systems from other countries rather than her own. Although there is a need for a

broad global understanding that would be expected as part of the curriculum, there is also a need

for localization. In Mariam’s example, she was discussing her frustration that material frequently

did not relate to her own country. This alludes to a similar finding from Aydarova (2013): faculty

hired to teach in the UAE context often adopt textbooks and examples from their own

international background, which puts the burden of making connections between the

international examples and the UAE context on the students. This can have very real

implications for students’ interest, because they are forced to intuit the utility value themselves,

develop their own situational interest and are not necessarily supported in developing interest

from teachers’ examples (Rotgans & Schmidt, 2017). Localization of the curriculum and

examples used by instructors would increase the utility value of material for female students, and

encourage students’ development of interest, leading to increased engagement.

The participants’ perceptions of when they were most engaged in learning often

connected with what might not be traditionally considered as part of core academic outcomes


related to the mastery of subject material. When participants were engaged, they often discussed

building “soft skills” such as interpersonal communication proficiency, teamwork expertise, or

developing in personal ways by gaining independence, building confidence or mastering

something new and personally useful for the first time. Although it is common for models of

student engagement to indicate that improving engagement enhances academic outcomes (Kahu,

2013a), it is uncommon for models to suggest that iterative engagement happens through

learning affective skills or being given opportunities to develop personally.

Using the lens of EVT, participants put a high value on opportunities to develop, which

draws my attention to it as a potential lever to improve or discourage engagement. Female

students may attribute intrinsic value, or utility value, or perhaps even attainment value to these

skills, and are therefore motivated when undertaking tasks that support this development.

As included in the Bernard (2015) definition, the experience of engagement is iterative,

and with it either positive or negative momentum can build. Although we know that being

engaged improves outcomes, this study suggests that the perception of being engaged for this

population came when they were given the opportunity develop personal affective skills

(independence, confidence) and interpersonal skills (teamwork) that did not relate to course

content. An important theme arose when participants mentioned a lack of interest in the material

as a reason to disengage, which is the opposite of seeing coursework as an opportunity to

develop. Participants stressed that to be engaged, they needed to be able to see the value of new

material to their own lives and when they could not see the relevance to their personal sphere or

the UAE context, it was their primary reason to disengage. Therefore, I suggest that this type of

experience needs to be intentionally scaffolded throughout course and program design as a

purposeful way to increase engagement.


Model summary

In this discussion, I have explained my contextualized model of engagement levers for

female Emirati students. At the centre is the individual student, with her values and expectation

of success. To support engagement, she needs to traverse to an intercultural context and

participate in applied and relevant coursework, in active teaching approaches or have

opportunities for extracurricular involvement to engage in learning in her undergraduate

program. She is most likely to engage if she experiences accessible language both from her

teacher’s lectures and in the required reading and coursework. It supports engagement if she is

given a structured and balanced approach to building independent learning skills, as it is likely

she may be very dependent on the instructor. A positive teacher-student relationship is important

for engagement, with an instructor who is culturally humble, attends to student signals, and is

aware of how to give both positive and negative feedback. Finally, she is most likely to enter an

iterative cycle of engagement if she is given an opportunity to develop personally and the

material is relevant to the UAE.

Implications of this Research

In this section, I make recommendations to educators who are teaching or facilitating

learning experiences for Emirati women based on the participants’ perception of what supported

or alternately were barriers to their engagement in learning.

The first recommendation is to recognize the importance of building a positive teacher-

student relationship. Taking time to build rapport in a classroom benefitted student engagement.

Simple tasks such as getting to know students by name, noticing good work, and ensuring

students got to know each other were important to female students. Further, the data suggests it is

important for a teacher to set high but achievable standards, with an air of friendliness rather than


strictness or meanness. Participants thrived when their perspectives were valued by their

instructors. As a cultural outsider—which most people teaching in this context are—be aware

that you can inadvertently silence female students by lacking empathy for the family pressures

on them or by judging cultural practices. Be curious about the culture and give female students

the opportunity to explain their perspectives. Most importantly, be conscious of not valuing your

own perspective over theirs.

A quotation “Academic language is . . . no one’s mother tongue” (Bourdieu et al., 1996,

p. 8) is common among professionals teaching language preparation programs, and underpins the

next recommendation: Be conscious of the language level of students. Disciplinary language is

complex and specialized, and participants did not believe their instructors recognized how

challenging it was for them to understand what they heard or how time-consuming and

frustrating it was for them to read what was assigned or produce written work.

Another recommendation is to understand that female students have a craving for

autonomy and independence, but learning may need to be intentionally scaffolded over time to

work towards their aspirations. Seemingly, study participants encountered barriers with learning

when they felt they were not given enough guidance or support, although the practices they

described would often be seen as a higher level of structure than in traditional higher educational

institutions.

Not finding the material interesting or relevant was a key barrier to learning. Being an

instructor who is enthusiastic and knowledgeable about the subject was one way to help

overcome this perception. Further, as an instructor it is important to connect the materials to

female students’ lives and their country. Participants reported the curriculum often drew on

examples and texts that are written outside the country, which they found frustrating. Why learn


about places they had no intention of going to, and why not learn about their own context? A

proposition emerging from this research would be to ensure that faculty have connections to the

local context in their specialized fields and that they are encouraged to bring that connection into

the classroom and curriculum.

Finally, participants found value in opportunities for affective and soft skills

development, which was connected to their experience of engagement in learning. Given the

context, and their sometimes-limited opportunities for independence, another recommendation

from this research is to ensure that courses intentionally foster opportunities for female students

to develop skills such as teamwork, self-confidence, leadership, problem-solving, and

communications.

Suggestions for Future Research

Further research is needed to understand factors that affect student engagement in this

context. First, studies testing the proposed model or the efficacy of interventions applied to

increase engagement based on experiences self-reported as critical to female students would

build on this research. These interventions could be at a task, course, or program level. Further,

collecting faculty input on what they perceive as critical for student engagement would add to

the understanding. Undertaking similar research focusing on different cohorts of students: single

program, first-year experience, male students or different language entry grades would expose

similar factors related to engagement. Undertaking similar research at other institutions in the

UAE (for example, private or other federal institutions) to see if results would be similar would

also increase understanding of experiences that help and hinder engagement.


Concluding Comments

In a book packed with techniques to support student engagement, Barkley (2010) states

that:

student engagement is the product of motivation and active learning. It is a product rather

than a sum because it will not occur if either element is missing. It does not result from

one or the other alone, but rather is generated in the space that resides in the overlap of

motivation and active learning (p. 6).

The idea that engagement only happens when certain elements are in place (active learning and

motivation in the case of the quote) is part of what makes engagement research so complex and

compelling. Which elements are the most important? In which contexts? What elements act the

same as a “0” in a mathematical product, consistently generating a nil result? There is no set

formula that will always result in students’ engagement, however, the aim of this study was

about suggesting the specific elements that, from the perspective of students, might shift the “0"

to a positive number. The themes that emerged from the data focused on the parts participants

individually played in their engagement and disengagement, as well as what others did to support

or impede them. Having an interest in something relevant, feeling they had some autonomy and

achievable language requirements came forward as helping to motivate them when they were

present, and discourage them when they were not. A large player in the student’s engagement

came from the instructor. A relational, empathetic, enthusiastic person who could connect

material to the UAE context was key. Support from peers could support engagement, but also

when group roles were unclear or goals were dissimilar, the experience could be very

disengaging. Family members playing encouraging supporting roles were also important. The

contextualized model I proposed from this study has four environmental levers that are


actionable by instructors, program designers and administrators to effect engagement in this

context. The levers were (a) accessible language, (b) positive instructor-student relationships, (c)

a balance of independence, and finally (d) personal development and relevance. Through

attention to these environmental factors, the data suggests it may be possible to remove the zeros

from the student engagement equations in this specific context.


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Appendix 1: Informed Consent

Name of Researcher, Faculty, Department, Telephone & Email:

Christina Davison

EdD Candidate, Graduate Student

Werklund School of Education


+971 50 721 0514, [email protected]

Supervisor:

Dr. Nancy Arthur

Professor



+1 (403) 220-6756, [email protected]

Title of Project:

Engagement in Learning: Helping and Hindering Factors for Female Students at a UAE

University

This consent form, a copy of which has been given to you, is only part of the process of informed

consent. If you want more details about something mentioned here, or information not included

here, you should feel free to ask. Please take the time to read this carefully and to understand any

accompanying information.

The University of Calgary Conjoint Faculties Research Ethics Board and the Public Federal

University Research Ethics Board have approved this research study.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study is to learn about your experience as a Public Federal University (PFU)

student, and particularly the times when you are “engaged” with learning in your classes. I want

to know what happens to help you feel interested, passionate, curious and inspired about the

experience of learning at university. This might be things that you do, think or feel yourself, or

things that other people do to help you. I also want to know about experiences where you have

been disengaged with learning. For example, what happens to make you act or feel disinterested,

bored, or dispassionate about learning. Last, I also want you to imagine things that you or other


people could have done to have helped you in the past to be more engaged. This information will

be used to help teachers at PFU, and other similar universities to improve their programs.

What Will I Be Asked To Do?

I am asking you to respond to a series of interview questions by telling me stories about your

experiences and opinions. When you come to this interview, I will ask you to bring a reminder of

work that you are most proud of that you completed at PFU as a student. We will use this work

as a starting point for our interview discussion. In the interview, I will ask you to tell me stories

from your past about times that you were very engaged and disengaged with learning. I do not

need to see, nor will I not keep a copy of the reminder of your work that you bring in, I only

want to have you describe it to me. I want to know specifically about things that you did,

thought, or felt when you were engaged or disengaged. I also want to know things that other

people did that helped or discouraged you. The other people might be friends, family, teachers or

anyone else you think was important.

I would like to audiotape our interview, so that I can make sure that I don’t miss anything you

say and include it in the analysis of the data.

After our interview, I would like to contact you again. First, I will send you a list of what I think

are the critical incidents, or most important stories, that you tell me in this interview. I will

include some categories that I think match your stories. Then I would like to have a short phone

call interview with you to discuss what I’ve written, and give you a chance to offer feedback or

clarify anything I might have misunderstood.

Depending on the stories, I think that this interview will take about 60 minutes, and the follow up

interview about 10 minutes.

You are being asked to make a voluntary decision whether or not to participate in this study.

Please read and think about the information given above. If there is any part of the information

you do not understand, please ask me to explain it. If you would like to consult with someone not

associated with this study that will be all right, too. If you decide not to participate, or decide

there is a question you do not want to answer, or if you later decide to discontinue your

participation, your decision will not affect your present or future relations with PFU. You will

always be free to discontinue participation at any time, and all data collected up to that time as a

result of your partial participation will be destroyed without being used in the study.

What Type of Personal Information Will Be Collected?

Should you agree to participate, I will be collecting some personal information from you: your

full name, email address and phone number so that I can contact you for the follow-up cross-

checking interview. I will also ask you some demographic questions about your age, academic

major, how long you have been a student at PFU, and how you first started at PFU (in language

prep, direct entry, or transfer).

I would like to audiotape this interview. My supervisor will also have access to the recording,

and she may listen to it to be sure that I am doing the interview properly. I will also give access


to small parts of your interview to a company to get help typing out everything you say. The

people in the company would only have access to short parts, and not the whole interview at a

time.

There are several options for you to consider if you decide to take part in this research. You can

choose all, some, or none of them. Please review each of these options and choose Yes or No:

I grant permission to be audio taped: Yes: ___ No: ___

I wish to remain anonymous,

but you may refer to me by a pseudonym (a pretend name): Yes: ___ No: ___

The pseudonym (pretend name) I choose for myself is: _________________________________

Are there Risks or Benefits if I Participate?

You might find some of the questions remind you about some bad times you have had at

university. If you are upset by these, it is ok to not answer the question. You also have the PFU

Counselling Services available to you if you’d like to talk to somebody about it.

You also might find it helpful to talk about the things that helped you be engaged or disengaged

with learning. This information might help you if you encounter a similar learning situation in

the future.

What Happens to the Information I Provide?

I have a master list that I keep in a private, protected place. It has your name and contact

information on it, as well as the pseudonym (pretend name) you listed above. If you didn’t

choose a pseudonym (pretend name), I will assign you one. For the rest of the study, I will only

refer to you by this pseudonym.

After our interview, I will have all of our conversation typed out (transcribed). I will then change

any time that your name is used to the pseudonym (pretend name) you listed above, or a different

pretend name if you didn’t provide one. I might also change some family relationships to make

sure that your stories are not identifiable (for example, I might change “sister” to “cousin” or

“uncle” to “family member”).

My supervisor may listen to the recording to be sure that I am doing the interview properly. I

also need to share the transcribed (typed out) interview with some other researchers who will

double check my work. You will only be referred to as your pseudonym for this.

In case you change your mind and would like to stop the interview, that is ok. Just tell me, and I

will stop the interview and the recording. You can leave the interview room if you choose. I will

destroy the recording and your information will be removed from the study.

If you change your mind after the interview and want your data excluded, that is ok too. You can

contact me up to 1 week after this interview and tell me you would like to withdraw. I will


destroy the recording and your information will be removed from the study.

After 1 week after the interview, the data may have entered into the aggregate data process

where I cannot identify which information came from which participant. If your data has entered

that part of the process, it may be impossible to remove it at that point.

The non-identifiable data will be stored for one year on a computer disk, at which time, it will be

permanently erased. The published results of the study will contain only data from which no

individual participant can be identified.

Participation is completely voluntary.

Signatures

Your signature on this form indicates that 1) you understand to your satisfaction the information

provided to you about your participation in this research project, and 2) you agree to participate

in the research project.

In no way does this waive your legal rights nor release the investigators, sponsors, or involved

institutions from their legal and professional responsibilities. You are free to withdraw from this

research project at any time. You should feel free to ask for clarification or new information

throughout your participation.

Participant’s Name: (please print) _____________________________________________

Participant’s Signature: _________________________________ Date: ______________

Researcher’s Name: (please print) ____________________________________________

Researcher’s Signature: ________________________________ Date: _______________

Questions/Concerns

If you have any further questions or want clarification regarding this research and/or your

participation, please contact:

Ms Christina Davison,

Graduate Student




+971 50 721 0514, [email protected]

Dr. Nancy Arthur

Professor



+1 (403) 220-6756, [email protected]

If you have any concerns about the way you’ve been treated as a participant, please contact the

Research Ethics Analyst, Research Services Office, University of Calgary at +1 (403) 220-4283;

email [email protected] .

A copy of this consent form has been given to you to keep for your records and reference. The

investigator has kept a copy of the consent form.

mailto:[email protected]


Appendix 2: Interview Guides

Interview 1 – Main Data Collection

Participant contact information sheet filled in? Yes/No

Consent form reviewed? Yes/No

Signed? Yes/No

If Yes, start recording.

Introduction

The purpose of this study is to learn about your experience as a PFU student, and particularly the

times when you are “engaged” with learning in your classes. I want to know what happens to

help you feel interested, passionate, curious and inspired about the experience of learning at

university. This might be things that you do, think or feel yourself, or things that other people do

to help you. I also want to know about experiences where you have been disengaged with

learning. For example, what happens to make you act or feel disinterested, bored, or

dispassionate about learning. Last, I also want you to imagine things that you or other people

could do in the future to help you be more engaged. So the interview has three main parts: when

you have been engaged, disengaged, and then what you wish you had.

This information will be used to help teachers at PFU, and other similar universities to

improve their programs.

The interview style that I’m using is going to ask you to describe a story about an

experience you have had. I am then going to ask you follow up questions to that story. It might

seem like I am asking the same question over and over. The reason why I do this is because I

want to completely understand all the important parts of the story you’re telling me. Sometimes

with this kind of questions, participants feel like they are not giving the “correct” answers and

they feel bad. I just want to assure you, this is not the situation!

Contextual questions:

Ok, lets get started. As you know, I am conducting research that is investigating what helps

students be interested, or engaged, in learning at university. The purpose of this interview is to

collect information about your own experiences and perceptions.

1. As a way of getting started, can you tell me a little about your degree path at PFU? What

program are you in now? How long have you been a PFU student? What program did you

start in?

2. Think about any classes you have been in. How does an interested, engaged student

behave? What do they do? How does a dis-interested, or disengaged student behave?

3. Would you describe yourself as an engaged student? Why or why not?

4. I asked you to bring a reminder of some university-related work (an assignment, an

activity, etc.) that you enjoyed working on. Can you tell me about the piece of work

you’ve brought with you?


Critical incident questions:

Helping:

1. Think about a time where you were particularly engaged with learning at PFU, like for

example the work we just talked about. I’ll give you a minute to think.

2. Tell me generally about the time you were particularly engaged.

3. What is one important thing that helped you be interested and engaged in that learning

experience?

4. Follow-up probes (if needed):

a. Was there anything you did?

b. Was there anything about what you thought?

c. Was there anything important about how you felt?

d. Was there anything someone else did? Teacher, friend, family member, other

person?

5. Follow-up probes:

a. When you say “[name the factor that they describe],” can you tell me what that

means to you?

b. What was it about [name the factor] that made it helpful for engaging you with

learning?

c. What led up to [name the factor] happening?

d. What did it look like in the situation to others or feel like to you when [name the

factor] was helping you?

e. What was the result or the outcome after you finished the learning experience?

6. Was there another important thing that helped you be engaged in that learning

experience? (Return to #2 until another factor cannot be named)

Hindering:

Now I am going to ask you about important experiences for you that have had a negative effect

on you being interested in learning. The times when you felt disinterested, or disengaged.

1. Think about a time where you were particularly disengaged with learning at PFU.

Perhaps a time where you acted or felt disinterested, bored, or dispassionate about

learning. I’ll give you a minute to think about it.

2. Tell me generally about the time you were particularly disengaged

3. What is one important thing that made you disengage or be discouraged in that learning

experience?

4. Follow-up probes (if needed):

a. Was there anything you did?

b. Was there anything about what you thought?

c. Was there anything important about how you felt?

d. Was there anything someone else did? Teacher, friend, family member, other

person?

5. Follow-up probes:


means to you?

b. What was it about [name the factor] that made it difficult or impossible for you to

engage with learning?

c. What led up to [name the factor] happening?


d. What did it look like in the situation to others or feel like to you when [name the

factor] was disengaging you?

e. What was the result or the outcome after you finished the learning experience?

6. Was there another important thing that helped you be disengaged in that learning

experience? (Return to #2 until another factor cannot be named)

Wish list

We’ve talked about important things that you have found helpful (name them), and some things

that have made it more difficult for you to be interested in learning (name them).

1. Now I’d like you to use your imagination. Imagine you are able to make a list to give to a

future teacher. On this list, tell them what you think will help you be more interested in

learning more often.


means to you?

b. How would [name the factor] help you in being interested in learning?

c. Can you tell me what specific kinds of situations or circumstances, where [name

the factor] would be very useful?

2. Repeat #1 until others do not appear.

Closing

Thank you for taking the time to talk with me today, and for openly describing your experiences.

I will contact you in the next couple of month or so to have you review my description of the

important points in your story, and some categories to describe it. I would like to have a short

phone conversation with you then.


Interview 2 – Participant Cross-check

Notify participant: I will take notes as a part of this interview. You may contact me to make any

revisions within one week if you choose to.

Did you get time to review the files sent? Yes/No

If No, give time for review.

Review of own Critical Incidents and Wish List items:

1. Are Critical Incidents and Wish List items correct?

2. Is anything missing?

3. Is there anything that needs revising?

4. Do you have any other comments?

Review of tentative themes into which participant’s incidents have been placed:

1. Do the headings make sense to you?

2. Do the headings capture your experience and the meaning that the incident or factor had

for you?

3. Are there any incidents that do not appear to fit from your perspective? If so, where do

you think they belong?

Wrap-Up

Thank participant, let them know to contact me if they think of anything else.

Supporting Female Students at a UAE University

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