The study aimed to qualitatively examine middle school students’ engagement in distance instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic. The participants comprised 119 students from a girls’ middle school in Seoul, South Korea. To gain an in-depth understanding of the students’ experiences, we collected their reflective journals, which included structured items about their learning engagement at three timepoints in 2020: April, July, and December. The following are the results: 10 themes and 18 concepts were derived, and they were integrated into causal conditions (sudden transition due to COVID-19), contextual condition (technology readiness, school education context), central phenomena (high level of behavioral engagement, low emotional engagement), interventional conditions (recognizing the potential of online learning, situational awareness about COVID-19 and online learning), action/interaction phenomena (development and use of self-regulated learning strategies), and consequences (changes in practices and perception towards online learning). Based on the findings, engagement patterns of the participants were classified into five types: proactive, conservative, receptive, reactive, passive learners. The present study demonstrated important findings that are essential for the improvement and development of engaging online learning strategies in the future.

Keywords : Distance instruction, COVID-19, Engagement, K-12 education, Qualitative research