Transitioning from school to university: a person-oriented approach to understanding first-year students’ classroom engagement in higher education

Abstract

ABSTRACT The first year at university is critical to students’ later academic development. The first year, however, is also the time when students are most vulnerable to disengagement and dropout. Therefore, identifying students most at risk of disengagement as well as the classroom environment factors that drive or undermine student classroom engagement in the first year plays a crucial role in preventing dropout in later years. This study makes a contribution in this regard by taking a person-oriented approach to discovering profiles of students with different configurations of classroom engagement and examining the classroom factors that determine the classification of students into such profiles. Latent profile analysis of self-report data from 413 first-year university students in Vietnam reveals three profiles of student engagement, namely highly engaged (N = 75), moderately engaged (N = 230), and minimally engaged (N = 108). Multinomial logistic regressions further reveal three classroom environment factors including peer support, provision of choice, and task relevance that predict the likelihood of student membership in the three profiles. The study findings offer useful implications for the development of instructional strategies and the manipulation of classroom environment factors that have potential to promote first-year student engagement in the classroom.