Honors and Non-Honors Student Engagement: A Model of Student, Curricular, and Institutional Characteristics

Honors administrators may ask whether honors experiences facilitate student growth and whether honors students are inherently smarter than non-honors students and hence more able to seize these opportunities for growth. Although these questions will never fully be answered, we designed the current study to address the underlying topics of student characteristics and engagement in honors within the larger university. Students’ motivation, their willingness to extend beyond the minimal level, significantly influences engagement. Honors students are engaged in experiences, curricular and extracurricular, that promote development, and the types of additional opportunities available to honors students and the feedback they receive affect participation. The interaction between honors students and their instructional environment may encourage them to engage with available resources more fully than non-honors students do