UNDERSTANDING STUDENT ENGAGEMENT WITH SCHOOL: A LITERATURE REVIEW

Abstract

In recent years, there has been an increasing amount of literature on student engagement with school. There is a large agreement on the predictive role that individual differences in student engagement with school plays in relation to a wide range of educational outcomes and to general adjustment. Numerous empirical studies have attempted to explain how individual characteristics of students (e.g., gender, academic motivation, school-related self-efficacy etc.), family environment (e.g., parent social support, aspirations of parents concerning the adolescents’ school trajectory or quality of adolescent-parents relationship), and the school/classroom climate (e.g., social support from teachers and peers, autonomy granted to students, quality of instructional practices etc.) impact student engagement with school and the academic achievement/performance. This paper summarizes the existing literature on antecedents and positive outcomes of student engagement with school. The implications for educational practice and policy makers are discussed.

Keywords

• engagement with school
• personal factors
• contextual factors
• developmental and educational outcomes