👋 Hello {{first name | reader!}}
In this edition of ⚗️DistillED, we're continuing our Poor Proxies for Learning series — a deep dive into the six classroom behaviours we often mistake for evidence of learning, but which don't guarantee it has occurred.
This series is inspired by the work of Professor Rob Coe, whose influential work has challenged the way teachers interpret what's really happening in their classrooms. Each edition focuses on one proxy in depth — unpacking the research, and giving you practical strategies to move beyond it.
This week we're tackling Proxy 2: Students are engaged, interested, and motivated.
It's the proxy that feels hardest to question. Engagement is what teachers are told to chase, what observers look for, and what students often enjoy most. But a student can be completely engaged in a lesson — and learn almost nothing from it. In this edition, we're going to explore exactly why.
In this edition
📊 Do Now: Quick Poll!
A student is clearly enjoying your lesson — they're enthusiastic, on task, and asking questions. How confident are you that learning is happening?
What is The Engagement Myth?
The Engagement Myth is the belief that because students are interested, motivated, and enjoying a lesson, learning must be happening. It's one of the most widely held assumptions in teaching — and one of the most misleading.
Engagement is not the same as learning.
This is Proxy 2 from Professor Rob Coe's framework of poor proxies for learning, introduced about the same time as the landmark 2014 Sutton Trust report What Makes Great Teaching? Coe identified student engagement as a poor proxy because, while it often accompanies learning, it doesn't guarantee it. A lesson can be thoroughly enjoyable and cognitively empty at the same time.
The issue isn't engagement itself — it's when we use it as our primary signal that learning is occurring. As cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham reminds us, the brain isn't naturally drawn to thinking hard. It's drawn to interest — and the two don't always overlap.
"The brain is not designed for thinking; it's designed to avoid it. Thinking is slow, effortful, and uncertain."
This is a crucial distinction. A student absorbed in a group work, a creative task, or an insightful video might be highly engaged — but if that activity isn't directing their attention toward the core content they need to learn, the engagement is essentially decorative.
Not all engaged classrooms are learning classrooms. The matrix below maps the relationship between engagement and cognitive effort — and shows why the top-left quadrant is the most dangerous place to be.
Here's a quick look at what The Engagement Myth IS and IS NOT:
👎 The Engagement Myth is:
Enjoyment Mistaken for Understanding → Students loved the lesson, but can't recall or apply the content next lesson
Activity Mistaken for Thinking → Busy, fun tasks that direct attention away from the core ideas
Motivation Mistaken for Effort → Students want to do well, but aren't being pushed to think hard enough
Interest Mistaken for Learning → A fascinating topic or engaging teacher creates the feeling of learning without the cognitive work
👍 Real Learning Looks Like:
Directed Attention → Students are thinking about the right things — the core content, not just the activity
Cognitive Effort → Tasks require students to retrieve, connect, explain, or apply ideas
Productive Discomfort → Learning often feels harder than engagement — and that's a good sign
Durable Recall → What students learned in lesson three can still be retrieved in lesson ten
Why Does The Engagement Myth Matter?
The Engagement Myth matters because it quietly shapes lesson design in ways that prioritise enjoyment over thinking. When we believe engagement signals learning, we design for engagement — and the cognitive work becomes optional.
Willingham's research is the essential lens here. In Why Don't Students Like School? he argues that while the brain enjoys novelty and interest, it actively avoids sustained effortful thinking. This means that highly engaging lessons — ones built around exciting stimuli, entertainment, or open-ended exploration — can actually reduce the amount of hard thinking students do, not increase it.
"Students remember what they think about."
This is the critical implication. If a student spends a lesson engaged with how fun the activity is, that's what they'll remember. If they spend it thinking hard about the content, that's what they'll remember. Engagement points attention somewhere — the question is whether it's pointing at the right thing. This can be dangerous, especially for novice learners - as Kirschner, Sweller and Clark note:
"Novice learners benefit most from explicit guidance, not discovery. Unguided approaches may generate engagement but not the schema-building that leads to genuine understanding."
Take a look at the diagram below — it shows how effortful thinking in working memory is what drives transfer into long-term memory. High engagement with low cognitive effort means information is never encoded and integrated with existing knowledge.
This is why the question to ask isn't "Are students engaged?" — it's "What are students thinking about?" Engagement is welcome. But it needs to be pointed at the right target.
📣 NEW! Poor Proxies for Learning Playbook
Unlock the full Poor Proxies for Learning Playbook for just £6—available exclusively during the 6-week DistillED series. A practical, evidence-informed guide that helps teachers identify and avoid the most common illusions of learning in the classroom — and design lessons that lead to real, lasting understanding.
6 Proxies, 6 Week Offer, Only £6.
How Do I Move Beyond The Engagement Myth?
Moving beyond the Engagement Myth is about ensuring that engagement and cognitive effort are pointing in the same direction. The goal is to design activities where the interesting thing and the hard thinking thing are one and the same.
In typical ⚗️DistillED fashion, here are five practical strategies to help:
Strategy | Explanation | Example |
|---|---|---|
Strategy 1: Ask "What Are Students Thinking About?"
| Before any activity, ask: "What will students actually be thinking about while doing this?" If the answer is the mechanics of the task rather than the content itself — the activity needs redesigning. Engagement is only useful when it's directing attention at the right target. | A role-play activity about World War I might be engaging — but if students are thinking about their performance, not the causes of the war, redesign it. Ask: "After this activity, what will students be able to recall, explain, or apply?" 👉 Read how to elicit frequent responses that direct attention in the DistillED edition on Active Participation |
Strategy 2: Use Engagement as a Vehicle, Not a Destination
| Willingham argues that interest and curiosity are powerful entry points into thinking — the key is to ensure that once students are engaged, the task immediately demands cognitive effort. Hook them with something interesting, then make them think hard about it. | Start with an intriguing question or surprising fact to spark curiosity — "What would actually happen to your body if you went into space without a suit?” — then immediately direct that engagement into retrieval, explanation, or problem-solving about the content. 👉 Read how story-driven explanations can hook students and build schema in the DistillED edition on Storytelling |
Strategy 3: Design for Desirable Difficulty
| Robert Bjork's research on desirable difficulties shows that the conditions which produce the most durable learning often feel less comfortable than highly engaging activities. Building in retrieval, spacing, and interleaving makes tasks harder in the short term — and far more effective in the long term. | Instead of reviewing yesterday's content with a fun quiz game, ask students to write everything they can recall from memory first — no prompts, no hints. Then use the quiz to check and correct. The effort of recall is where the learning happens. |
Strategy 4: Separate Enjoyment from Evidence
| When students say "That was an amazing lesson", it usually tells you they enjoyed it — not necessarily that they learned anything. Build in low-stakes checks for understanding throughout the lesson so you have actual evidence of learning, not just positive affect. | At the end of an engaging activity, use an exit ticket: "Without looking at your notes, write three things you learned today and one thing you're still unsure about." This gives you real evidence — and often reveals gaps that engagement masked. |
Strategy 5: Make the Content the Interesting Thing
| The most powerful form of engagement isn't an exciting task — it's genuine curiosity about the content. When students find the ideas fascinating, rather than just the activity, their thinking automatically directs itself at what matters. This takes time to cultivate, but it starts with how teachers talk about their subject. | Frame content with genuine enthusiasm and intellectual curiosity: "This next idea is one that completely changed how scientists think about X — and it's going to change how you think about Y." Then deliver on that promise with rich, well-explained content. |
Engagement is a wonderful thing in a classroom. But it's a starting point, not a finish line. The question is always: what are students thinking about? Make sure the answer is the subject matter — and the learning will follow.
Until next week!
— Jamie
If you want more:
👉 Read the original DistillED edition on Poor Proxies for Learning
👉 Read Part 1 of this series — Poor Proxies #1: The Busy Trap
👉 Explore the The Attention and Hard Thinking one-page guides
👉 Get the DistillED Playbooks for practical, evidence-informed classroom practices
📥 Free One-Page Guide
Poor Proxies for Learning One-Page Guide
This edition is part of the Poor Proxies for Learning series. To help you see the full picture, download the original free one-page guide — a practical overview of all five proxies, what they look like in the classroom, and what to do instead.
⚗️DistillED+ Exclusive Content
This week, ⚗️DistillED+ members get access to The Engagement Myth CPD PowerPoint, Strategy Checklist, and an exclusive One-Page Guide — going deeper than the free guide with a full focus on Proxy 2. It breaks down how to audit lessons for cognitive direction, design activities where engagement and thinking point at the same target, and use checking for understanding as your real signal that learning has occurred.
