Crossing the great divide : the motivation and engagement framework in action

![CDATA[The psychology and the sociology of education often seem to face each other across a vast theoretical chasm. This paper introduces a motivation and engagement framework that works across this “great divide”. Called the MeE Framework (Munns & Martin, 2005), it offers a way of understanding the complexity of relationships that students have with school and education. The framework is based on a theoretical view that there are both sociological and psychological dimensions of students’ relationships with schools and education. It highlights the connections between appropriate pedagogies, discourses, and meaningful connections (by way of sociological foundations) to individual students’ cognitive and behavioural lives (by way of psychological foundations). Through the interconnection of these sociological and psychological foundations, it is hypothesised that students come to feel that their school has something to offer them at a cognitive, emotional, and participatory level. The paper illustrates how this framework has been used as an evaluative and planning mechanism in a primary and a secondary school. Both these schools undertook significant changes in order to improve the social and academic outcomes of their students.]]