Some Social-Relational Correlates of Student Engagement in Portugal

Este E-Book reúne um conjunto de investigações apresentadas no “I Congresso Internacional Envolvimento dos Alunos na Escola: Perspetivas da Psicologia e Educação” (ICIEAE), organizado no âmbito do “Projeto PTDC/CPE-CED/114362/2009 - Envolvimento dos Alunos na Escola: Diferenciação e Promoção” (EAE-DP), financiado pela Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT).

This study, part of a larger, national project, focused on some of engagement’s socialrelational correlates. Our objective was to study student engagement in a Portuguese sample of students in order to refine the knowledge base. A national sample of students in Portugal responded to a questionnaire while in their class groups. A total of 685 students provided data for the study. The data collection instrument was the “Students’ engagement in school: A four-dimensional Scale” EAE-E4D (Veiga, 2013). This scale revealed four dimensions: cognitive, affective, behavioural and agency. In addition, measures of perceived parental support (eight items), and several socialrelational variables suggested by the literature were included. Student attitudes about grades (marks) were evaluated by the item, “grades are the principal motive for my interest in school”. Less than one third of the students (27%) indicated any disagreement with the affirmation. The most highly engaged students tended to give extreme, and opposing, responses, to this item. Perceived Parental Support was significantly associated (p< .001) with all four dimensions of engagement (ranging from r = .35 with the cognitive dimension to r = .22 for agency). The association with total engagement was r = .44. As a general tendency, mean values of perceived parental support decreased from grade 6 through grade 9 (all tests significant at p< .05). Students tended to disagree that class size was a factor in their engagement. The results extend the knowledge about student engagement in school. Some observations are consistent with the international literature. Parental support is a factor in student engagement. Perceived parental support generally tends to decline over time in the transversal adolescent sample. Contrary to some international findings, student responses indicated that class size was not perceived as a direct factor in their engagement. Student engagement cannot be considered a simple continuum with monotonic effects and should be examined in function of intrinsic and extrinsic valence.