Student engagement with school: Conceptual and applicative dimensions
Student engagement with school: Conceptual and applicative dimensions

Summary/Abstract: The issue of student school engagement has attracted a growing interest from researchers and practitioners in the field of education sciences. In recent decades, many undesirable phenomena have been observed in many countries, such as decreased school motivation, underachievement, school failure or premature abandonment of the educational path. Constant engagement is one of the individual psychological characteristics that contextually influence students' performance in school work and their adjustment to school tasks. Deepening the study of this dimension is necessary for practical, educational, economic and social reasons. Although in international literature the conceptualization of engagement in school activity varies, there is a relatively broad agreement on its multidimensional nature. Four dimensions of engagement have been delimited, described and empirically validated: cognitive, affective, behavioural, and agentic. Several standardized measures have been built and validated to operationalize indicators of school engagement. They are based on different conceptual perspectives. Also, a consistent body of empirical evidence supports the fact that engagement is a psychological process that mediates the effects that a number of individual and contextual factors (e.g. the instructive-educational and social-relational climate in school) have in the students' activity at different ages. Our work provides a review of literature that has been concerned with indicators, working models and measurement of school engagement.

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