Chapter 2: Student Engagement and Achievement

Student engagement is a multidimensional construct consisting of emotional, behavioral, and cognitive elements. Since this construct unifies factors related to the whole child’s perceptions of and investment in their schooling, engagement is described in the literature as a worthwhile goal for schools to pursue (Jimerson, Campos & Greif, 2003; Fredricks, Blumenfeld & Paris, 2004). The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between student engagement and student achievement among disaggregated groups of middle school students (n = 552) attending a high-achieving, relatively diverse, suburban middle school. The use of a state accountability assessment in mathematics and reading as a measure of achievement in this study sought to fill a gap in the literature exploring the relationship between engagement and NCLB test results. Absent specific measures of student perceptions of their schooling experience, schools and communities are often left with achievement measures like NCLB accountability tests to make inferences about the quality of their schools. If a quality indicator of schools is the extent to which students are emotionally, behaviorally, and cognitively engaged in their schooling experience, this study challenges whether those inferences are warranted.