College Precalculus is a critical gatekeeper course that determines students' academic trajectories, yet student engagement within it remains poorly understood. This hermeneutic phenomenological study addresses this gap by asking: What is the story of engagement for students in Precalculus? Through a series of four interviews with 12 undergraduates, incorporating methods like engagement graphs and artifacts, this research captures the lived experience of engagement across a semester. The findings reveal that engagement is not a static state but a dynamic, interconnected system, akin to a pinball machine. Students' engagement is in constant flux, shaped by a web of interactions with instructors, peers, course materials, and assessments. A single disruption, such as a perceived misalignment between homework and a test, can create a ripple effect, shattering confidence and forcing a complete recalibration of strategies. A central contribution of this dissertation is the proposal of two distinct orientations of engagement: reactive engagement, which is a direct response to external course pressures, and proactive engagement, which is self-initiated and driven by the student's own intentionality. This nuanced, student-centered perspective challenges simplistic categorizations of students as "engaged" or "disengaged." The study concludes that the story of engagement is one of continuous adaptation and sense-making, providing a foundation for designing more supportive and effective learning environments in high-stakes gatekeeper courses.
