Interrelations of Behavioral Emotional and Cogni

Authors: Yibing Li Richard M Lerner

Publish Date: 2012/11/21

Volume: 42, Issue: 1, Pages: 20-32

PDF Link

Abstract

School engagement or the extent to which students are involved in attached and committed to the academic and social activities in school plays a prominent role in preventing academic failure promoting competence and influencing a wide range of adolescent outcomes Although the multidimensional nature of school engagement is wellrecognized how the three purported parts of the construct work together is largely unknown By using data from the longitudinal 4H study of Positive Youth Development involving a sample of 1029 adolescents 677  female mean age at Grade 9 = 1492 years 744  of participants were European American 52  were Latino/a 73  were African American the current study examined the interrelationships of behavioral emotional and cognitive aspects of school engagement over three years in adolescence Grades 9–11 We used autoregressive lagged effects models to assess the relationships among the three engagement constructs Results indicated that behavioral and emotional engagement were related bidirectionally each variable was a basis and an outcome of the other In addition behavioral engagement influenced cognitive engagement but the reverse of this relation was not found Implications for future research are discussedYL was the primary author of the current research This manuscript is based on her doctoral dissertation work YL conceived of the study conducted and interpreted all statistical analyses and drafted the manuscript RML read and edited numerous drafts of the current manuscript contributing both theoretical and methodological revisions

Keywords: