Student Engagement And Its Influential Factors In The Middle-school Physical Instructional Activity

Student engagement is the key factor affecting academic achievement. The studies from different culture groups have showed that there was a strongly positive correlation between student engagement and students'academic achievement and between student engagement and mental health; lacking student engagement led to some problems, which brought the big puzzles to teachers and parents and prevented curriculum reform. Since 1980, studengts'engagement in teaching has been a hot topic attracting the attentions of teaching staffs.At present, the field has gradually turned from theoretic to practical.In view of physics subject and based on large numbers of positive dates, the paper takes students in the middle-school physical teaching as the subjects to analyze the traits and its influential factors of student engagement in the middle-school physical teaching. The paper is made up of three studies,including designing and editing the questionnaire of student engagement in the middle-school physical teaching, analyzing the traits of students'engagement in the middle-school physical teaching and influential factors and their traits of student engagement in the middle-school physical teaching.Measurements applied in the paper are as follows:(1)Student engagement scale in the middle-school physical teaching. There are such three dimensions in the scale as behavioral engagement, cognitive engagement and emotional engagement, in which behavioral engagement variables consisting of concentration and study, cognitive engagement variables consisting of superficial strategies,general strategies and meta-cognitive strategies,emotional engagement variables consisting of pleasure, sense of achievement, anxiety and boredom. (2)Influencing factor scale of student engagement, There are such four dimensions in the scale as teaching, learning environment, self-efficacy and supports from parents, in which learning environment variables consisting of teachers'supports,learning expectation and behavioral expectation, teaching variables consisting of positive teaching strategies, cooperative learning, extension, self-efficacy variables consisting of the sense of basic abilities and control sense, parents' supports variables consisting of communication at home and participation in the school.The main conclusions in the paper are as follows:(1)Student engagement in the middle-school physical teaching includes behavioral engagement, cognitive engagement and emotional engagement. The whole engagement is positive and the scores are in such proper order as behavioral engagement, cognitive engagement and emotional engagement, which shows student engagements are on the low level. Moreover, the traits of students engagement show grade and sexual differences:students'behavioral engagement and emotional engagement in middle schools higher than students in high school;students'in-deep cognitive engagement in high schools higher than students' engagement in middle schools; boys'engagements level higher than girls';girls'superficial behavioral engagement and cognitive engagement level higher than boys',but no difference in superficial behavioral engagement and cognitive engagement; while significant difference in in-deep behavioral engagement, cognitive engagement and negative emotional experience.(2)Student engagement is an important factor affecting academic achievement. Among these variables,superficial behavioral engagement and cognitive engagement is no significantly related to academic achievemen;study variables included in in-depth behavioral engagement (study)and in-depth cognitive engagement has significant effects on physical achievement. Positive emotions positively related to academic achievements;negative emotions negatively related to academic achievement; sense of achievement and pleasure significantly positively related to physical achievement; boredom negatively related to physical achievement.;anxiety negatively related to academic achievement.The results reveal that the impacts of student engagement on learning outcomes are complex and simple external act must not improve students' achievements that are involved in deep-level cognitive and emotional engagement. So we can see that only full engagement that a positive emotional experience and deep-level cognitive engagement is the core can improve students'achievements.(3)Cognitive engagement and emotional engagement are closely linked. Students' emotional are positively related to cognitive engagement. There are close relationships between superficial cognitive engagement and the senses of anxiety and boredom and between cognitive strategies and the senses of pleasure and achievement that also reflect the differences of students'psychological involvement in physical teaching and shows positive emotional involvement will bring in-deep cognitive engagement. The result is also consistent with some foreign researches.The three variables involved in cognitive engagement are significantly correlated to the variable and students' behavioral performances.In middle-school physics teaching, students may show in similar outside behavioral engagement, but the internal inconsistency cognitive involvement. So students'behavioral performances in middleschool physics classroom behavior of may not be able to explain the underlying cognitive orientations and engagement depth. Behavioral engagement and is positively related to positive emotional experience and negatively related to negative emotional experience.Among them, the positive emotional engagement (a sense of achievement),a sense of boredom is significantly related to in-deep behavioral engagement; low-level behavioral engagement generally related to emotional engagement. This conclusion reflects the external learning behavior of students is not necessarily accompanied by external positive emotional engagement.(4) Student engagement in the middle-school physical teaching is not only related to learning environment, teaching, self-efficacy and parents'supports,etc.,but also to students'gender,age.,personal'demography background.On the whole, the teaching score is the highest, followed by the learning environment and parents'supports, the lowest self-efficacy. For different grade Groups, the score of the junior high school students is higher than high school.In the junior high school are significantly different from high school in cooperative learning variable and self-efficacy variable included in teaching. For different sex, the boys scored higher than girls, in which the learning expectations in the learning environment and cooperative learning in teaching, and self-efficacy are significantly different and other factors no significant differences.(5)In view of the whole fit index of estimating mode, theoretical assumptions model of students'engagement in the middle-school physical teaching constructed in the paper and actual collection of dates fit good. Learning environment, teaching, self-efficacy and parents'supports are the main factors affecting the students significantly.Among them, the impacts of teaching, learning environment and self-efficacy on student engagement reach very obvious significance level;the impacts of parents'supports on cognitive and behavioral engagement and emotional engagement are significant. The results show that teaching has the most significant effect on student engagement. At the same time, the learning environment and self-efficacy which affect students'engagement as independent variables and also the impact of teaching and parents'supports on students' engagement as the intermediary variables plays an important role in students'engagement.The results show the enlightenments on middle-school physical teaching, teachers'professional development, physical researchers and curriculum policy and on instructions and studies of related subjects in the middle schools.