Understanding behavioural engagement and achievement: The roles of teaching practices and student sense of competence and task value

Role of achievement value, teachers’ autonomy support, and teachers’ academic pressure in promoting academic engagement among high school seniors

This study investigated the effects of individual and contextual factors (students and classrooms) on academic engagement by adopting an analytical approach based on hierarchical linear modeling. The participants in this study included 906 high school students (42.7% male) from 42 classrooms in South Korea. We established that achievement value and teachers’ autonomy support had a statistically significant positive impact on academic engagement at both the student and classroom levels. However, teachers’ academic pressure had a positive impact on academic engagement only at the classroom level. Cross-level interaction effects between the student and classroom levels, achievement value (LV 1) and autonomy support (LV 2), teachers’ academic pressure (LV1) and achievement value (LV 2), and those on teachers’ academic pressure at both levels were also identified.

Perceived teacher autonomy support for adolescents’ reading achievement: The mediation roles of control-value appraisals and emotions

Analyzing students’ internal cognitive-motivational appraisals and achievement emotions is of pivotal importance for educational outcomes and student individual wellbeing, yet little is shown about their associations with teacher autonomy support. This study investigates the relationship between perceived teacher autonomy support and reading achievement by addressing mediating influences of control and value-related constructs, i.e., reading self-efficacy, meaning in life, and reading enjoyment. Multiple mediation modeling was adopted to test the proposed model with carrying out a total of 12,058 students from 361 schools in China in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 reading database. The results elucidated that student-perceived teacher autonomy support is significantly positively related to adolescents’ reading outcomes by fostering internal control and value appraisals and academic enjoyment. These current findings confirm the positive correlation between teacher autonomy support and adolescents’ motivational and emotional factors, providing significant practical implications for educators to adopt various teaching strategies to enhance adolescents’ self-efficacy, intrinsic values, and positive emotions.

School Engagement, Academic Achievement, and Self-Regulated Learning

School engagement occupies a place of reference in recent educational psychology research owing to its potential to address poor school results and school dropout rates. However, there is a need for a unifying theoretical framework. The study proposed the characterization of school engagement and explored the extent to which different profiles are associated with academic performance and self-regulation. With a sample of 717 5th and 6th year primary school students, this study was carried out via the latent profile analysis (LPA). Two groups of low school engaged students—one characterized by low behavioral engagement (5.02%) and the other by low emotional engagement (6.55%)—were distinguished. The majority of participants showed moderately high (31.95%) or moderate (56.48%) levels of school engagement in its three dimensions. Students with high engagement had the best grades and managed their time and study surroundings better, were the most strategic in seeking information, and showed less maladaptive regulatory behavior. The differences between students exhibiting low behavioral and emotional engagement and those exhibiting moderate levels in these dimensions may center upon the management of contextual resources and management of information and help. This research supports the need to approach the study of school engagement by observing the combination of its emotional, behavioral, and cognitive dimensions.