Students’ engagement in school, academic aspirations, and sex

Este E-Book reúne um conjunto de investigações apresentadas no “I Congresso Internacional Envolvimento dos Alunos na Escola: Perspetivas da Psicologia e Educação” (ICIEAE), organizado no âmbito do “Projeto PTDC/CPE-CED/114362/2009 - Envolvimento dos Alunos na Escola: Diferenciação e Promoção” (EAE-DP), financiado pela Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT).This study examined students’ engagement in school, attending to academic aspirations and sex differences, as part of a larger research project on the differentiation and promotion of students’ engagement in school. Speciically, the aims of this study were as follows: to estimate the associations between academic aspiration (number of years that students intend to study) and school engagement; to analyze if sex has any effect on the associations between academic aspirations and school engagement; to understand if academic aspirations have a signiicant contribution to the explanation of the variance in school engagement dimensions; to examine if sex is a predictor of school engagement dimensions. The sample included 685 students attending 6th, 7th, 9th and 10th grades (Mage = 13.82, SD = 1.92). The current paper analyses only the responses to a scale designed to measure engagement in school, as well as the answers to an open-ended question used to capture the level of students’ academic aspirations. Data showed positive correlations between the level of students’ engagement in school and the level of academic aspirations. Further research on students’ assigned importance to engage in school may enrich this research domain. Considering the lack of studies on these concepts, results are framed within the context of social-cognitive perspective of adolescence development, emphasizing the importance of activating and maintaining academic aspirations among secondary school students