Abstract
A proactive personality provides students with strong competitiveness in academic learning. However, previous research primarily focused on the effects of the big five facets, and less attention was paid to proactive personality which shows more incremental validity in learning. The current study aimed to investigate the relationship between proactive personality and academic engagement. The sample consisted of 519 students (245 females, 274 males; Mage = 10.20, SD = 0.891). The study used Mplus 7.0 software to establish structural equation models (SEM). The results showed a significant positive relationship between proactive personality and academic engagement. Teacher-student relationships and academic self-efficacy were found to fully mediate separately between proactive personality and academic engagement. Moreover, the serial mediator model indicated that proactive personality was sequentially related to academic engagement through teacher-student relationships and academic self-efficacy. The implications for learning and teaching are discussed.
Highlights
Academic engagement, defined as students’ active participation in and emotional commitment to learning (Casuso-Holgado et al, 2013), has a critical role in academic success (Wang and Eccles, 2012; Kwon et al, 2018)
Based on the model of reciprocal causation (MRC; Bandura, 1989) and social cognitive theory (Bandura, 2007), this study investigated the extent to which teacher-student relationships and self-efficacy act as mediators in the relationship between proactive personality and academic engagement
The findings showed that proactive personality was significantly related to academic engagement, which supported H1
Summary
Academic engagement, defined as students’ active participation in and emotional commitment to learning (Casuso-Holgado et al, 2013), has a critical role in academic success (Wang and Eccles, 2012; Kwon et al, 2018). Students with a high level of academic engagement are more likely to concentrate on learning and achieve higher academic performance (Wang and Holcombe, 2010; Kwon et al, 2018) On the contrary, those with a low level of engagement may fail exams, drop out of school, and have problems in behaviors (Fredricks et al, 2004; Chipchase et al, 2017). Openness to experience (Bakker et al, 2015) and conscientiousness (Sulea et al, 2015) were positively associated with academic engagement, while neuroticism was not significantly related to academic engagement (Closson and Boutilier, 2017). Theorists have argued that, when trying to associate personality traits to a specific criterion, the criterion-related validity of basic personality traits maybe not be suited to explaining the outcome (Hough and Schneider, 1996)
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