The Effect of Students' Social-Ecological Engagement on Educational Attainment

• In Event: 14.045 - Roundtable Session 2
  In Roundtable Session: 14.045-2 - Engagement, Experience, and Aspiration

Abstract

Drawing from previous work on profiles of student engagement in early high school, this study uses Latent Class Regression analysis to examine the association between different profiles of student engagement and educational attainment outcomes such as high school completion and post-secondary enrollment. Our results indicate that students’ behavioral engagement patterns help explain important variations in students’ high school completion outcomes. However, the marginal effect of these behavioral patterns becomes much more variable, if not limited, when post-secondary enrollment outcomes represent the criterion of interest. We conclude that while students’ behavioral engagement patterns are strongly predictive of high school completion outcomes, interactions between students’ engagement behaviors and dispositions offer a more nuanced explanation of students’ post-secondary enrollment patterns.

Author

• Michael A. Lawson, University of Alabama