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Research On College Student Development And Its Influencing Factors Based On Student Engagement Theory

Posted on:2014-06-18Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:X Y ZhaoFull Text:PDF
GTID:1267330422968096Subject:Management Science and Engineering
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
Higher education is the core area of talents cultivation. In China, higher education is experiencing the special transition from elite to popular. With the rapid growth of the number of students access to higher education, higher education is becoming scarce resources, and the quality of higher education is on the hazard. Therefore, improving the quality of higher education has become one of the new direction of development of higher education. However, the quality evaluation of higher education is lack of process indicators which reflect the core part of talents cultivation in high education. In order to change the current model of quality evaluation, this paper evaluates students’ learning process and learning outcomes from the perspective of students’ experiences. Student engagement is gradually becoming the new standard to evaluate the quality of higher education and the important basis of reforming the mode of talents cultivation. Taking the shortcomings of traditional quality evaluation of higher education into consideration, the relationship between student’s perception of higher education environment, student engagement and student outcome was analyzed from the perspective of students’ experiences. Moreover, the multiple group analysis of structural equation model was employed to data analysis according to student’s background charcateristics. On the basis of empirical research, a few suggestions of talents cultivation in higher education were put forward.The work of this study can be summarized as follows:Situated in China’s talent cultivation context, we synthesized relevant concepts and theories and adopted focus group and expert consultation method to design the College Student Experience Questionnaire in China scale to explore the important factors influencing student development and achievement. And the reliability and validity of this scale was proved to be effective using empirical data.The problem of how to improve the quality of undergraduate students in higher education has been a topic of concern for years. In order to explore factors that influence student development and achievement, this paper proposed a conceptual model involving student perception of environment, student engagement and leaning outcomes based on related engagement theories. After a thorough literature review, we hypothesized that student perceptions of school environment will have a direct influence on student engagement in school practices and activities, and in turn student engagement will directly shape student development and achievement. In addition, student perceptions of environment will indirectly and positively influence student development and achievement through the mediating effects of student engagement. And the hypotheses were supported by subsequent empirical study results.To explore whether student individual characteristics, that are field of study, origin of birth (city/rural), being first-generation student, have moderation impacts on paths between student engagement and student development constructs, multi-group structural equation model analysis techniques was adopted and the results revealed that student field of study, origin of birth and being first-generation students could all moderate the paths between student engagement and student development constructs.Considering the problems of talent cultivation in China’ higher education system and the findings of the empirical study conducted, this paper proposed some feasible suggestions to improve the quality of undergraduate students in higher education.
Keywords/Search Tags:Student engagement, College environment perception, Studentdevelopment, Structural equation modeling, Multi-group Analysis
PDF Full Text Request
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