A Study On The Correlation Among Senior High School Student Perceived Teacher Engagement,Learner Agentic Engagement,and English Achievement

The National English Curriculum Standards of High School(2020 Edition)requires that English teachers cultivate students’ autonomous learning awareness.Students’ agentic engagement(AE)reflects their level of autonomy in learning.Therefore,efforts should be paid to improve learners’ AE in English learning.However,very few studies have been done on students’ AE and the factors influencing it in foreign language teaching and learning.Students’ AE may be influenced by teacher engagement(TE)in classroom teaching,which has been widely studied in general education but neglected in senior high school English teaching.This study aims to explore the correlation among senior high school students’ perceived teacher engagement(PTE),AE,and English learning achievement.The following three research questions will be addressed: 1)What are the levels of senior high school students’ PTE and English learning AE? 2)Is there a significant correlation between senior high school students’ PTE,AE,and English achievement? 3)Does students’ AE play a mediating role between PTE and their English achievement? A total of 245 students from Grade Two in a senior high school in Guangzhou were selected as participants.Data were collected through questionnaires,semi-structured interviews,and English testing.The results show that: 1)Senior high school students’ AE in English learning and their PTE are generally at a moderate level.Specifically,the three dimensions of students’ PTE from high to low are emotional engagement(EE),social engagement with students(SES),and cognitive engagement(CE).The four dimensions of students’ AE from high to low are: helping teachers in teaching(HT),helping peers in learning(HP),and self-effort in learning(Self)and cooperating with teachers in teaching(CT)are both at the lowest level.2)A significant and positive correlation exists between students’ PTE,AE,and English achievement(namely grades).Specifically,the three dimensions of PTE have a significant positive correlation with students’ English achievement,and the correlation between students’ perceived EE and English achievement is the highest;the three dimensions of PTE are positively correlated with the four dimensions of students’ AE,and the correlation between students’ perceived EE and students’ HT is the highest;the four dimensions of AE are positively correlated with students’ English achievement,and the correlation between CT and students’ English achievement is the highest.3)Students’ AE in English learning plays a partial mediating role between PTE and their English test grades.Based on the above findings,the present study proposes that efforts should be paid to promote high school students’ AE in English learning and improve their English achievement.First,schools should adopt measures to encourage English teachers to be more engaged in teaching.Second,English teachers should enrich their teaching theories and update their teaching methods regularly.Moreover,English teachers should build a supportive,collaborative,and inclusive atmosphere in classroom teaching.