Racial and Linguistic Status Differences in the Effect of Interscholastic Sport Participation on School Engagement and Academic Performance Among High School Students

Student resilience to COVID-19-related school disruptions: The value of historic school engagement

Does historic school engagement buffer the threats of disrupted schooling - such as those associated with the widespread COVID-19-related school closures - to school engagement equally for female and male high school students? This article responds to that pressing question. To do so, it reports a study that was conducted in 2018 and 2020 with the same sample of South African students (n = 172; 66.30% female; average age in 2020: 18.13). A moderated moderation model of the 2018 and 2020 data showed that historic levels of school engagement buffered the negative effects of disrupted schooling on subsequent school engagement (R² = .43, β = -5.09, p < .05). This protective effect was significant for girl students at moderate and high levels of historic school engagement, but not at lower levels of historic school engagement. Disrupted schooling did not significantly affect school engagement for male students at any level of historic school engagement. In addition, student perceptions of teacher kindness were associated with higher school engagement and having experienced an adverse event at school with lower school engagement. The results point to the importance of facilitating school engagement and enabling school environments - also when schooling is disrupted.

Examining the Provision of School-Based Athletics in Public High Schools Among Girls in the United States

BACKGROUND

In order to better understand some of the barriers to athletic opportunities for girls, we examined school-level characteristics to assess how they are associated with both the provision and participation in athletic opportunities for girls across US public high schools.

METHODS

Cross-sectional data for this study comes from the bi-annual Civil Rights Data Collection which collects school-level information for all US public schools between the 2009-2010 through 2017-2018 school years.

RESULTS

Several important school-level characteristics were found to limit the provision of athletic opportunities, participation rates and athletic participation gender equity ratios for girls and included the percent of the student body who were eligible for free lunch and who were racial minorities. Moreover, the analysis found that greater provision of athletic opportunities for boys was associated with lower athletic participation gender equity ratios across US public high schools (ie, lower participation for girls when compared to boys).

CONCLUSIONS

This study provides evidence that schools with fewer resources and a higher proportion of disadvantaged students tend to have the fewest opportunities to participate in school-based athletics, particularly among girls. Moreover, girls' participation rates in athletics still lag behind boys despite having similar numbers of sports and sport teams.

Relating Student Engagement Indicators to Academic Performance Using Multiple Correspondence Analysis

Student engagement is an essential device for deepening learning, achieving learning outcomes, developing competencies, and improving academic performance in education settings. It is widely receiving increased attention among various scholars and higher education leaders. However, there are increasing concerns about the academic performance of students in higher education settings. The application of statistical data analytics for mining student engagement datasets is a candidate strategy for discovering essential indicators associated with academic performance. However, widely used data analytic methods like principal component analysis are ineffective when most of the indicators captured are categorical, making them inappropriate for establishing the weighty academic performance indicators. This study’s objective was to investigate the application of multiple correspondence analysis to establish weighty student engagement indicators of academic performance. This study’s findings have indicated that higher-order learning and student-staff interaction are weighty indicators that relate student engagement to academic performance.