A Multidimensional Analysis Of Junior High School Students’ English Classroom Engagement

One of the goals in teaching is to increase students’ engagement in learning,and whether students can fully engage in classroom activities has an important influence on the evaluation of teaching activity.According to Astin’s Theory of Student Engagement,student engagement is as much a psychological as a physical phenomenon.In the past three decades,some researchers have focused their concentration on precursors,outcomes and measures of engagement,and some on the ways to facilitate student engagement.A large number of studies measured behavioral engagement(involvement in academic and on-task behavior),emotional engagement(attitudes,interest and values)and cognitive engagement(learning strategy and self-regulated learning)of students.The present study is designed to explore the status quo of junior high students’ engagement in English class and to investigate whether the students from different groups defined in this study are different in behavioral,emotional,and cognitive engagement.A questionnaire was delivered to 248 junior high students and interviews were conducted to 6 of their English teachers and 9 students,the selected participants are from Xi’an Foreign Language School.The data collected are processed and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively,it reveals that(1)junior high school students exhibited higher behavioral engagement and relatively lower cognitive and emotional engagement in class;Students from Grade Seven are found more deeply involved in English learning in class than those from Grade Eight and Grade Nine.Grade Nine students have higher cognitive engagement than Grade Eight students.(2)students of higher academic achievement are much more engaged than those who are not so academically capable.High achievement students and low achievement students are significantly different in the three dimensions of classroom engagement.(3)there is no significant difference can be detected between male students and female students in classroom engagement.While student leaders are found engaged in classroom activities more actively not only behaviorally,but also cognitively and emotionally.