Multi-dimensional explorations into the relationships between high school students’ science learning self-efficacy and engagement

ABSTRACT

Promoting student engagement in learning activities and tasks has been a pivotal issue and goal of science education. Relevant literature has not yet addressed the underlying associations among students’ self-efficacy and engagement in science learning from a multi-dimensional perspective. Thus, this study aimed to examine the structural relationships between the two constructs through the structural equation modelling technique to differentiate the predictive powers of multi-faceted self-efficacy on various forms of engagement. A total of 478 Taiwanese senior high school students were invited to answer two survey instruments concerning self-efficacy and engagement in science learning, respectively. The main findings indicate that, first, the ‘Science Learning Engagement Instrument’ was proven to be valid and reliable to assess the students’ five distinct forms of engagement, including Cognitive, Behavioral, Emotional, Social, and Agentic engagement. It seems that the students had less agentic engagement experiences compared to the other forms of learning engagement. Moreover, this study further identified the multifaceted effects of self-efficacy on the manifold aspects of learning engagement in the literature. Overall, the path analysis results provide evidence that, in order to deeply engage learners in science learning, promoting their science learning self-efficacy from various aspects is of great importance.

KEYWORDS:

• Affective domain
• engagement
• self-efficacy
• secondary/high school

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was, in part, financially supported by the Institute for Research Excellence in Learning Sciences of National Taiwan Normal University from The Featured Areas Research Center Program within the framework of the Higher Education Sprout Project by the Ministry of Education in Taiwan. It was also supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan, under grant numbers MOST 107-2511-S-003-004-MY2 and MOST 108-2511-H-003-005-MY2.