The impact of institutional support and student engagement on educational outcomes of Orang Asli students at public universities

ABSTRACT

The barriers that indigenous students face in pursuing higher education are substantial and far-reaching. This study seeks to understand the impact of institutional support on engagement of Orang Asli students and its effects on their learning outcomes and academic achievement. Quantitative data were collected from 160 Orang Asli students from three tribal groups through an online survey. Indigenous students from 11 selected public universities in Malaysia have responded to the survey, with a response rate of 89%. The partial least squares (PLS) approach was used to analyse the data. Results of the structural model showed that despite the absence of dedicated indigenous support centres at public universities in Malaysia, institutional support still have significant impact on engagement of Orang Asli students, which in turn affects their learning outcomes and academic achievement positively. The implications of the research findings and recommendations for future research are discussed in this paper.

KEYWORDS:

• Indigenous students
• support
• engagement
• learning outcomes
• academic achievement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) under Grant 304/PGURU/6313165.

Notes on contributors

Melissa Ng Lee Yen Abdullah

Melissa Ng Lee Yen Abdullah is an associate professor at the School of Educational Studies, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM). She has a basic degree in Arts and  Education and both master's and doctorate degrees in the field of Educational Psychology. She is also an associate research fellow at the National Higher Education Research Institute (IPPTN), Malaysia. Dr. Melissa is keen on researching issues related to teaching and learning of students with diverse backgrounds, including indigenous students.

Doreen Primus

Doreen Primus has a doctorate and master's degree in Educational Psychology and has interest in the research of indigenous students at secondary and tertiary levels. Coming from indigenous group herself,  she has written few insightful articles on university's indigenous students, which were published in journals as well as presented at conferences. Among the publication, one paper has won the best research paper in 2016.