ABSTRACT
This chapter explores different phenomena that can be activated to speak about student engagement (SE) in Brazilian higher education to highlight the relation between SE and quality assurance. In Brazil, SE as an object of knowledge cannot be constructed without considering the related phenomena of student activism and student representation. The meso level of SE in Brazil can be explored by resorting to yet another analytical device: the idea of social fields of action. In strategy development, SE may depend on other sociopolitical variables that need to be explored through the lenses of political science and sociology. In occupations, students claimed protagonism and took SE beyond higher education; to engage with a university was to contest the very social order and political framing in which academic work takes place. At the micro level, students have proposed and organised courses and seminars, trying to build momentum for curricular reform that enhances their training as both researchers and teachers.
