Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Anderson, Amy Reschly

Titel

Student engagement and dropout: An investigation with students who have mild disabilities

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

Erscheinungsjahr

2004

Quelle

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Although student dropout has been a significant national issue for the last 2 decades, the number of students who leave school prematurely has remained relatively unchanged since 1987 (Kaufman, Alt, & Chapman, 2001). Current legislation and societal trends, such as the No Child Left Behind Act, the growing disparity between the earnings of dropouts and school completers, and the increased effect of education on employment and earnings indicate that school completion is perhaps more important now than at any other time in our nation's history. Students with mild disabilities, one of the highest-risk populations for dropout, have only occasionally been the focus of research or intervention efforts. The purpose of this study was to examine the engagement of students with Learning Disabilities and Emotional Disturbance and the relation of engagement to dropout and completion. Student engagement in this study is based on the work of Finn (1989) and McPartland (1994). Data were drawn from the National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS) database. Three of four types of engagement proposed by Christenson and Anderson (2002) were used in this study: behavioral (e.g., attendance, preparation), psychological (e.g., relationships with teachers), and cognitive (importance of education to future, boredom at school). Participants were parent-identified students with Learning Disabilities and Emotional Disturbance and comparison groups of average-achieving peers and non-disabled students who dropped out and stayed in school. Comparisons of the engagement of students with mild disabilities and average achieving peers were significant, but small in terms of the effect sizes, and indicated that students with disabilities reported less desirable engagement than average-achieving peers. After accounting for achievement test scores, grade retention, and SES, variables strongly associated with dropout and completion, student engagement variables were significant predictors of dropout and completion for students with Learning Disabilities, Emotional Disturbance, and students without disabilities. Implications of these results in terms of the construct of student engagement and dropout and future directions for research are described.