Student Engagement and Experience Journal Creating a Dynamic Engagement

Copyright © 2014 Julie Wintrup. This is an open access journal article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This article explores how professional health education might be more specifically informed by theoretical and empirical literature relevant to student engagement. The distinctive circumstances students find themselves in are explored in relation to the different cultural arenas in which they learn, the competing value systems they navigate and the different forms of pedagogy they encounter. Becoming a member of a health profession is discussed as a moral endeavour, conducted in uncertain and liminal spaces filled with possibility and risk. Yet- to paraphrase Couldry (2000)- the conditions of both academia and practice, and of students ’ personal lives, can serve to limit the type of selves, the kind of health professionals, they can become. Those conditions, as lived, understood and interpreted by students themselves, must be the subject of deeper inquiry if we are to promote conditions that fully develop and fulfil their agentic, social and dynamic potential. Finally, the role of identity formation within health practice and education is discussed, drawing on Giddens ’ (1991) reflexive project of the self. Ways to promote more dynamic forms of engagement, through lived experiences and across departmental, disciplinary and organisational boundaries, are offered and discussed