Relation between Students' Perception of Teaching Styles and Students' Academic Engagement in South Valley and Assiut Universities

Abstract

Teaching styles play an important role in encouraging student engagement. Study aims: To determine the relationship between students' perceptions of teaching styles and students' academic engagement in South Valley and Assiut Universities. Study design: Descriptive correlational research design was used. Setting: The study was conducted at two Nursing Faculties in South Valley and Assiut Universities. Subjects: The study included 600 nursing students which chosen by a simple random sample. Tools: Two tools were used for data collection. Tool I was students' academic engagement questionnaire and tool II was teaching styles' questionnaire. Results: It was found that higher students' academic engagement (50.8%) in Assiut University compared to (49.2%) in South Valley University. Also, the most dominant teaching style was democratic teaching style with statistically significant differences (P=0.02, 0.000, 0.000) respectively as regard administration, pediatric and obstetric & gynecological nursing and reproductive health departments in South Valley and Assiut Universities. Moreover, there was a positive statistically significant difference between teaching styles and students' academic engagement as regard democratic teaching style in the pediatric nursing department in Assiut and South Valley Universities (P=0.000, 0.01) respectively and obstetric & gynecological nursing and reproductive Health departments in South Valley University (P=0.01). Conclusion: Students' academic engagement in Assiut University was higher than South Valley University. The most dominant teaching styles in South Valley and Assiut universities were democratically followed by authoritarian. Also, there was a statistically significant difference between students' perception of teaching styles and their academic engagement. Recommendation: The university and the lecturers should provide a positive teaching and learning environment which is up to date because it can form a conducive and suitable environment for students' academic engagement.