A holistic approach to student empowerment and assessment of its impact on educational outcomes through psychological ownership

ABSTRACT

In the wake of many emergent challenges facing higher education institutes (HEIs), this paper investigates the role of student empowerment in achieving desirable academic and experiential outcomes. Drawing on the self-determination and ownership theories, the study explores how students’ satisfaction and perceived learning can be improved through their involvement in various activities within and beyond classrooms. It is further posited that such involvement encourages empowerment and fosters psychological ownership, which is critical for meeting the aforementioned holistic outcomes. The study deploys a mixed-method research design and uses Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to analyse the data collected from the sample of 428 students. Besides supporting the majority of the proposed hypotheses, the results establish psychological ownership to be a crucial link between student empowerment and educational outcomes. More significantly, the findings demonstrate the importance of carefully considered and planned involvement practices in achieving such outcomes. To this end, the paper discusses and offers several recommendations and implementation pathways that could potentially serve as a playbook for the instructors and administrators at various HEIs.

KEYWORDS:

• Student empowerment
• psychological ownership
• self-determination theory
• perceived learning
• student satisfaction
• improving academic environment

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback and suggestions on the previous versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

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