title: What makes students engaged in learning? A time-use study of within- and between-individual predictors of emotional engagement in low-performing high schools.
abstract: Adolescents' emotional engagement plays a critical role in promoting their academic performance as well as overall psychological wellbeing. As a part of a 3-year longitudinal study, this study drew upon self-determination theory to examine three psychological predictors of emotional engagement within specific learning contexts. Ninety-four, low socioeconomic status (SES), ninth grade students (49% male; 32 Blacks, 30 Whites, and 32 Latinos) rated the perceived fulfillment of their autonomy, competence, and relatedness needs and their emotional engagement in learning settings at multiple time points over a 1-week period. Hierarchical linear modeling showed that the students' ratings of their psychological-need fulfillment and of their emotional engagement fluctuated over time and across contexts. After accounting for student gender, race/ethnicity, and prior achievement, we found that the fulfillment of each type of psychological need in a particular learning context was related to emotional engagement in that context (i.e., within-student level). The fulfillment of students' need for autonomy also was related to their emotional engagement at the aggregated level (i.e., between-student level). These findings illustrate how the psychological affordances of particular learning settings are associated with emotional engagement within and between students from low SES backgrounds.
authors.affiliation: Department of Education, Cognition and Development, Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1670, USA. sirapark@berkeley.edu
authors.forename: Sira
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Park
authors.forename: Susan D
authors.initials: SD
authors.lastname: Holloway
authors.forename: Amanda
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Arendtsz
authors.forename: Janine
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Bempechat
authors.forename: Jin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D000124:Achievement; D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior / Q000523:psychology; D004521:Educational Measurement; D004777:Environment; D005006:Ethnicity / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D007858:Learning; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D026684:Personal Autonomy; D010549:Personal Satisfaction; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D011786:Quality Control; D012574:Schools / Q000592:standards* / Q000639:trends; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology; D014481:United States