Understanding Engagement in Out-of-School Contexts

• In Event: Student Engagement Across Contexts

Abstract

Objective and Perspective. Student engagement in afterschool programs has been heralded as a potential key factor explaining variability in student outcomes related to afterschool participation (Bohnert et al., 2010). However, despite these claims, little is known about engagement in the out-of-school context, and past research lacks a clear, theoretically-aligned conceptualization of engagement in this context (Fredericks et al., 2017). While some scholars report that afterschool engagement is associated with increased academic achievement (Kauh, 2011; Mahoney et al., 2005) and social competence (Shernoff, 2010); other reports lack these significant findings (Arbreton et al., 2008). These disparate and mixed findings are in part due to the lack of conceptual clarity of engagement in out-of-school contexts. To address this limitation in the research, this study adopts Wang and colleagues (2019) framework of engagement and adapts it to the out-of-school context.
Two research questions directed this work:1) What is the most appropriate factor structure for the Afterschool Engagement scale; and 2) Does engagement in afterschool programs predict adaptive youth outcomes?

Method and Materials. The sample includes 197 middle school students (37% sixth, 38% seventh, and 23% eighth) who regularly participate in a school-based afterschool program. The majority of these students identified as male (54.48%) and Black (81.38%). Academic achievement scores were collected from the school division, and students completed a paper-pencil survey. The paper-pencil survey consisted of the following two measures.
Afterschool Engagement Survey. This survey consisted of 16 items that asked students to rate, on a 5 point Likert-scale (ranging from 1 = not at all like me to 5 = very much like me) how engaged they are in their afterschool program (see Table 1). McDonald’s Omegas ranged between .70 and .89.
Positive Youth Development Survey (Geldhof et al., 2014). This survey consisted of 17 items and was designed to measure students’ positive developmental characteristics. McDonald’s Omegas ranged between .45 and .79.

Results. A series of Confirmatory Factor Analyses (see Table 2) suggested that a bifactor model of engagement best fits the data (see Figure 1). Thus, afterschool engagement is best characterized by the four specific factors of engagement (behavioral, cognitive, affective, and social) and a global (general) engagement factor. Further, structural equation modeling suggested a significant relationship between global engagement and Math achievement where a one standard deviation increase in global engagement was positively and significantly associated with a 3.67 point increase in mathematics grades. A significant relationship was also found between engagement (global, cognitive, and social) and PYD.

Significance. This study contributes to the out-of-school time engagement literature as it is the first time that all four hypothesized factors of engagement have been measured in an afterschool context. This work confirms the extension of the bifactor model of engagement into the out-of-school space, resembling prior in-school engagement work (Authors, 2020). Finally, this work provides practitioners with a validated and simple approach to measuring students’ engagement experiences and relating them to adaptive student outcomes, further supporting the notion that engagement is related to youth development and achievement.

Authors

• Ashlee Lester Sjogren, University of Virginia

• Sharon Zumbrunn, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Christine Lee Bae, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Michael Broda, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Nancy L. Deutsch, University of Virginia