School engagement and school burnout profiles during high school – The role of socio-emotional skills

ABSTRACT

This study examined latent profiles of school burnout symptoms, studyholism, and engagement among high-school students. The dimensions of school burnout (e.g., exhaustion, cynicism, feelings of inadequacy), studyholism, and overall school engagement were examined as indicators of the latent profiles. The OECD socio-emotional skills framework (curiosity, grit, social engagement, belongingness, and academic buoyancy) was examined in predicting students’ belonging to different latent groups. The participants were 1038 high-school students from the Helsinki metropolitan area who completed an online survey concerning their experiences of school-related burnout, engagement, studyholism, and key socio-emotional skills. The results from the latent profile analyses showed that three homogeneous groups of students could be identified according to students’ experiences of burnout, studyholism, and engagement, namely engaged (34%), stressed (47%), and burned out (19%) groups. The results showed that in the context of socio-emotional skills, those who reported high curiosity, grit, academic buoyancy, social engagement, and belongingness were more likely to belong to the engaged rather than the stressed or burned out groups, and to the stressed rather than the burned out group.

KEYWORDS:

• School burnout and engagement
• latent profiles
• socio-emotional skills

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Due to the similarity between the constructs of school engagement, social engagement, and studyholism, the item loadings for each construct was tested with explorative factor analysis using principal axis factoring and varimax rotation. The analysis were run separately for school engagement and the two other constructs. The results showed that items of each construct loaded to separate factors describing school engagement, social engagement (two factors, one describing positive and one negative social engagement), and studyholism. The eigenvalues for each factor were greater than 1, and item factor loadings in all models were high (greater than.57). Results for the KMO and Bartlett’s test of sphericity were .69*** and .79***. In the first model, school engagement factor explained 37% and social engagement factor 18% (positive) and 12% (negative) of the total variance, and in the second model school, engagement factor explained 40% and studyholism 30% of the total variance.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Academy of Finland [1320241,308351].