Students’ Situational Engagement in a Primary School Science Project

Situational engagement captures students’ momentary experiences during learning activities and can provide insights that are not accessible through more general measures of engagement. This study examined how a robotics and coding project-based learning (PBL) module influenced fourth-grade students’ situational engagement, focusing on variations across four instructional phases – skill building, ideation, skill implementation and co-reflection – and identifying latent engagement profiles. Using an Experience Sampling Method (ESM) in a repeated-measures design, 143 students reported their perceived skill, interest, and challenge levels at 12 measurement points throughout the project. As situational engagement may not be uniform across an entire class, employing Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) helps identify subgroups of students who share distinct engagement patterns. LPA identified four engagement profiles – engaged, underchallenged, moderately engaged, and disengaged – and revealed consistently high levels of situational engagement, with notable variations in challenge and interest experiences across phases. Engagement peaks occurred during skill-building activities (Optimal Learning Moment, OLM rate = 26%), whereas the ideation phase produced the lowest OLM rate (20%) alongside the highest perceived challenge. These findings highlight the value of balancing structured and unstructured phases in PBL and provide guidance for educators on how to sustain students’ engagement throughout the module, particularly in mathematics and science contexts.