School engagement of children in early grades: Psychometric, and gender comparisons

Abstract

School engagement reflects the degree to which students are invested, motivated and willing to participate in learning at their school and this relates to future academic and professional success. Although school engagement is a primary factor predicting educational dropout or successful school completion in Europe and North America, little is known about school engagement factors in non-English speaking countries. We adapted a 15-item school engagement scale and assessed validity and reliability of the Russian translation on a sample of Russian school-aged children (N = 537, 6-12 years, 46% females) who attended at public schools in Moscow. Results of the final factorial structure that included emotional, cognitive and behavioral components were selected based on its excellent fit indices and principles of parsimony. Component results show that the emotional component has the highest internal consistency and the behavioral component has the lowest. Although, all components are significantly interrelated, we observed no gender differences and no significant correlation with age. Theoretically, our data agree with the notion that children's emotional engagement in schools sets the foundation for learning, participating and succeeding in school activities. Practically, the proposed scale in Russian can be used in educational and clinical settings with Russian speaking children.

Fig 1

Standardized regression weights in (A) Model 1: an initial confirmatory factor analysis model of the 15-item SEC-RU scale, (B) Model 2: a revised confirmatory factor analysis model of the 15-item SEC-RU scale, and (C) Model 3: a final confirmatory factor analysis model of a 13-item SEC-RU scale.