Momentary Student Engagement as a Dynamic Developmental System

In this article, we apply complex dynamic systems theory to the concept of student engagement, to conceptualize how engaging momentarily in schools and colleges occurs as a complex system of motivation, emotion, cognition, and physical action, operating across seconds and minutes. We describe momentary student engagement as being comprised parts and their interdependencies and suggest how the parts of momentary student engagement can converge through nonlinear circular causality into an attractor state that is maintained across momentary time. We conclude by conceptualizing momentary student engagement as an action sequence that begins with a trigger and ends with disengagement. This new conceptualization is proposed as a starting place for new empirical approaches and theoretical developments.