Beyond Classroom Academics: A School-Wide and Multi-Contextual Perspective on Student Engagement in School
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NARRATIVE REVIEW
Beyond Classroom Academics: A School-Wide and Multi-Contextual Perspective on Student Engagement in School Ming‑Te Wang1 · Tara L. Hofkens2 Received: 18 December 2018 / Accepted: 1 March 2019 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
Abstract School engagement researchers have historically focused on academic engagement or academic-related activities. Although academic engagement is vital to adolescents’ educational success, school is a complex developmental context in which adolescents also engage in social interactions while exploring their interests and developing competencies. In this article, school engagement is re-conceptualized as a multi-contextual construct that includes both academic and social contexts of school. The authors begin by describing how the characteristics of these contexts provide the opportunities and resources for adolescents to engage in academic learning and social interactions throughout school. Motivational theories are then used as an operational framework for understanding how adolescents become engaged in school, which is followed by a discussion about how adolescents’ academic and social engagement interact to shape their academic achievement. The article concludes with implications for practice and future research. Keywords School engagement · Academic achievement · Academic engagement · Social engagement · Adolescent development
Introduction School engagement has taken a prominent place in recent psychological and educational research because of its potential for addressing poor academic achievement, student misbehavior, and school dropout (Archambault et al. 2009; Li and Lerner 2011; Wang and Peck 2013). Broadly, the term “school engagement” refers to the quantity and quality of students’ involvement in school and their interactions within school activities (Skinner and Pitzer 2012). In addition, school engagement is multi-dimensional, consisting of behavioral, affective, and cognitive components (Fredricks et al. 2004) as well as dynamic and reciprocal processes that influence and are influenced by the school environment (Wang and Degol 2014). Features of the school environment provide the opportunities and resources for engagement to occur, and students’ skills, attributes, needs, and * Ming‑Te Wang [email protected] 1
University of Pittsburgh, 230 South Bouquet Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
University of Virginia, 405 Emmet St S, Charlottesville, VA 22903, USA
2
values determine how they engage in those opportunities. Understanding the types of opportunities and resources that support students’ engagement has become a priority for informing education policy and practice (Wang and Eccles 2012a, b; Wang and Holcombe 2010). While the past 30 years have seen an influx of research on school engagement, this research has historically focused on academic engagement, particularly engagement in academic coursework (Wang and Degol 2014). Although the significance of academic engagement cannot be discounted, academic learning in schools occurs in a fundamen
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