Poster #67 - Academic Engagement among students in Brazil

• In Event: 3-003 - Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Section - Education, Schooling

Integrative Statement

The role of support in academic engagement of Brazilian students

The school climate is an essential factor for the quality of school life. Taking that into account the purpose of the current study was to examine how the support as an aspect of the school climate theory can contribute with student’s academic engagement and also the associations between academic engagement, support and victimization. The present research was conduct in Brazil, with students enrolled in elementary education in full-time public schools, with 363 students from 20 different classes, 49,9% boys and 51,1% girls. The mean of age was 10 (SD= 0,83), and regarding participants’ ethnicity, 132 (36,4%) identified as white, 188 (51,8%) as mixed ethnicity (pardo), 22 (6,1%) as black, and 3 (8,0%) as yellow and 18 (5,0%) as indigenous. The variables were accessed through three self-reporter scales: Authoritative school climate (Cornell and Huang, 2016), (15 items, α = .85); reduced version of the School Engagement Scale, (12 items, α =.762), (Fredricks, Blumenfeld, Friede and Paris 2005), translated for use in the Brazilian context and evaluated by backtranslation (Cunha, 2012); and Aggression and Victimization Scale between Peers (EVAP) (18 items, α =.848) (Cunha, Weber & Steiner, 2009). The data were analyzed using a two-level multilevel modeling approach (HLM). The unconditional model intra-class correlation (ICC) revealed that 7.3% of the variability in academic engagement was at the classroom level, χ2(19) =43.00631, p= 0.002. Adding victimization as a predictor a significant effect was observed b= -0.10, SE = 0.01, t(19) = -5.58, p = .000. To explain, victimization was associated with less engagement. Victimization reduced prediction error, PRPE= -5.5% and significantly improved the model ∆χ2(4) 152.38297 p <.001. A significant effect was also observed for gender as a predictor, b= 0.079710, SE = 0.021291, t(19) =3.744, p = .002. To explain boys in class with lower support have lower engagement. Gender decrease in predictor error PRPE=-4.49% and significantly improved the model ∆χ2(1) =594.3807, p<.001.support at the school level was added on the intercept, the victimization, gender and interaction slopes. A significant effect was observed for sex b= 0.074986, SE= 0.023753, t(18)= 3.157, p= 0.006. This decrease PRPE= -0.77%, and ∆c2(17)= 8,99897 and significantly improved the model. This decrease PRPE= -0.77%, and ∆χ2(17)= 8,99897 and significantly improved the model. The results of this study confirm the data pointed out by the literature that victimization is negatively related to academic engagement (Juvenon et al., 2010; Nakamoto et Schwartz, 2010), and also demonstrated that teacher support positively influences academic engagement (Konold & Cornell, 2015), especially among boys. Thus, the present study contributes to the literature by pointing out the important difference between genders, indicating that male gender may suffer greater damages in rooms that do not have teachers that provide adequate levels of support. So the support can be consider as a protective factor that can facilitate the healthy development of the students in risk, aggression and bullying behaviors (Cornell et Huang, 2016), in this study especially the boys.

Authors

• Ana Macedo, Universidade Federal do Paraná
  Non-Presenting Author

• Josafa Da Cunha, Universidade Federal do Paraná
  Presenting Author

• Jonathan Santo, University of Nebraska Omaha
  Non-Presenting Author