Abstract
School engagement plays a prominent role in promoting academic accomplishments. In contrast to the relative wealth of research that examined the impact of students’ school engagement on their academic achievement, considerably less research has investigated the effect of high school students’ prior achievement on their school engagement. The present study examined the relationship between prior achievement and school engagement among Chinese high school students. Based on the Dweck’s social-cognitive theory of motivation, we further examined the moderating effect of students’ theories of intelligence (TOIs) on this relationship. A total of 4036 (2066 girls) students from five public high school enrolled in grades 10 reported their high school entrance exam achievement in Chinese, Math and English, school engagement, and TOIs. Results showed that (a) students’ prior achievement predicted their behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement, respectively, and (b) the association between prior achievement and behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement is strong for students with an incremental theory but not for those with an entity theory in the emotional and cognitive engagement. These findings suggest that prior achievement and incremental theory were implicated in relation to adolescents’ school engagement. Implications and future research directions were discussed.
Highlights
Over the past decade, researchers on adolescents’ academic development have become increasingly interested in investigating the Chinese students’ learning and achieving (Hau and Ho, 2010)
School engagement plays a prominent role in aspects of academic success and individual well-being (Upadyaya and Salmela-Aro, 2013)
The present study examined the relationship between Chinese high school students’ prior achievement and their school engagement, and the moderating effect of students’ theories of intelligence (TOIs) on this relationship
Summary
Researchers on adolescents’ academic development have become increasingly interested in investigating the Chinese students’ learning and achieving (Hau and Ho, 2010). Some evidence suggested that TOIs may be a key factor in explaining some aspects of school engagement, wherein students with an entity theory showed more helplessness approach to schoolwork, increased academic self-handicapping, truancy, and disengagement, and are more likely to feel various types of negative emotions such as anger, anxiety, shame, hopelessness, and boredom (King et al, 2012; Wang and Ng, 2012; De Castella and Byrne, 2015) In addition to these well-established differences, there is some evidence that the relations between prior achievement and school engagement may be conditioned by TOIs. For example, students with an incremental theory were more likely to believe that working hard was necessary and effective in achievement than those students with entity theory (Blackwell et al, 2007). Three of them are key high schools (3107 students), and the rest two are regular high schools (929 students)
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