The quest for the holy grail of student engagement: curriculum as the engagement integrator

This chapter canvasses engagement’s contemporary complexity; in particular, its vexed relationship with belonging post-pandemic and the relative invisibility of key influences such as transitions and student partnerships. It posits a more expansive view of engagement as a holistic, umbrella construct, that finds its modern outworking in the lived experience of students’ daily interactions within their institution’s shifting socio-cultural ecosystem. This engagement is less transactional and more transformational - an ongoing, iterating process, cultivated longitudinally in a reciprocal dynamic between institutions and students. But whatever ‘it’ is, the focus of our theoretical attention must be on enabling engageable and inclusive learning that engenders belonging, meaning, mattering and relevance equitably for all students while safeguarding their mental wellbeing. The integrative framework of Transition Pedagogy, together with examples of its practical operationalisation across six curriculum principles, is offered as an evidence-based but eminently practical vision for the possible: a modern university of engaged learning.