The Effects of School Support on School Engagement with Self-Determination as a Mediator in Students with Special Needs

ABSTRACT

While the relationship between self-determination and the academic achievement of students has been widely tested across cultures and groups, limited research has examined the antecedents of self-determination and their impacts on school engagement, which is the pre-requisite of academic achievement. The present study, based on the self-system processes model of motivation, tested the relationships between peer support, school support, self-determination, and school engagement in 118 secondary school students with special needs integrated into mainstream schools in Hong Kong. The results showed that school support has a significant indirect effect on school engagement via self-determination as a mediator. The correlations between school support, self-determination, and school engagement are all positive and significant, whereas peer support did not correlate with school engagement. Controlling for the factors of peer and school support, self-determination was the strongest predictor of school engagement for students with special needs. The current findings may highlight the importance of school support and self-determination interventions to enhance the school engagement of students with special needs in inclusive educational settings.

KEYWORDS:

• Social support
• self-determination
• school engagement
• special educational needs

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong, China [grant no. 18404614]. No financial interest or benefit is expected to arise from direct applications of this research.