Adolescents' engagement profiles and their association with academic performance and situational engagement

Abstract

This study examined adolescents' engagement profiles and their association with situational engagement and academic performance in lower secondary school settings. The data consisted of 301 Grade 7 students from Finland. By utilizing person-oriented approach with Latent Profiling Analysis on subscales capturing students' overall engagement, four subgroups of students with different overall engagement profiles were identified. These profile groups were further analyzed with respect to differences in student background (gender and maternal education), academic performance (GPA, and reading and mathematics tests), and lesson-specific situational engagement. The profile groups showed differences with respect to gender, maternal education, and GPAs as well as situational engagement. The findings provided new insights into the associations between overall and situational engagement by documenting concordance but also disconcordance between them, and by showing situational fluctuation of engagement in particular among students with high overall engagement.