This Research Brief highlights findings from a qualitative study of the contextual factors that shape engagement in adult literacy education. Engagement is mental effort focused on learning and is a precondition to learning progress. Some researchers focus on engagement as a cognitive, or mental, process closely related to such things as motivation and self-efficacy. They seek to understand how the engagement process works and how it is related to learning. Others examine how learning context shapes engagement—how the educational environment affects how and whether learners engage. This study focused on the second tradition, how learning context shapes engagement, for a very practical reason: to a great extent adult educators control the educational context. Thus if they understand how the educational context shapes engagement, they can influence engagement in positive ways.
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