Learner Engagement in the Age of Distraction: Designing for Educational Complexity Through Pragmatic Adaptive Leadership

By Deborah Devis, Maesie Macgillivray, Samuel Fowler

How can schools foster genuine engagement in an age of distraction and complex learning needs?

Too often, efforts to motivate students treat engagement as an individual problem, overlooking the social, cultural and organisational systems that shape learning. Drawing on multiple theories of learning and complexity, this book treats student engagement as a designable system, not a fixed trait. It presents the Pragmatic Adaptive Leadership and Design Model: a framework for understanding how learners engage in activity and how schools can design conditions for meaningful, sustainable participation. Clear templates, protocols, worked examples and case studies show how to implement transformative motivational change while supporting wellbeing.

Accessible and practice-focused, this is an authoritative guide to fostering authentic engagement and enacting lasting motivational change within educational institutions.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1447380932
• ISBN13: 9781447380931
• Release Date: April 2027
• Publisher: Policy Press
• Length: 176 Pages
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 2.0" x 5.0"