What Adolescents Find Engaging and Why the Content of Instruction Does Not Come Up: A Student-Centered Just Perspective on School Engagement

This study presents a new student-centered just perspective on school engagement in Finland. Using cultural-historical activity theory as a conceptual framework, it explores the views of adolescent students, school staff, and school partners through semistructured interviews ( n = 29) and thematic analyses asking what adolescents find engaging in school. The findings across the three interview groups show a limited emphasis on the official object of schoolwork, namely the content taught in school, compared to a much greater emphasis on peer relations. Students’ own interests related to content they engage with in their lives outside the school remain largely disconnected from the adults’ answers and from the content of instruction. In light of these findings, this study points to the necessity even in the generally acclaimed educational system in Finland to explore ways to support school engagement so that adolescents may perceive a continuity between what is taught in school and nascent interests in their own lives. To move in this direction, the notion of object-oriented critical school engagement is proposed.