Many educational strategy proposals to better engage students assume that all students are similar in how they are motivated to do their best. Yet, students are likely to respond to educational challenges put before them very differently. Students may be engaged in different ways and perhaps not fit into a “one best model” of schooling. Ask any parent that has more than one child, and he/she is likely to tell you just how different their kids are.

Crux Research recently completed a project for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute entitled What Teens Want From Their Schools: A National Survey of High School Student Engagement. This project was based on more than 2,000 interviews and six focus groups of US High School Students. A central feature of the project was a segmentation model that highlighted that although there are many aspects of student engagement that students hold in common, students tend to be strongly associated with one of six primary engagement tendencies. In short, it is unlikely that one model of schooling can be optimal for all children.

A full report of this project is available here.