Access Type

Open Access Dissertation

Date of Award

January 2017

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Department

Educational Psychology

First Advisor

Cheryl L. Somers

Abstract

The current study investigated the roles of select intrapersonal and environmental factors in high school adolescents’ academic engagement, behavior, and achievement. This aforementioned combination of factors has not been considered for their combined ability to explain greater proportions of variance in academic engagement, behavior, and achievement, despite the fact that ecologically, there are multiple life contexts that interact to explain academic achievement development and this selection may provide important information. Participants were 415 high school students (171 males, 244 females) from a mid-western, suburban high school that enrolls about 1,285 students. Future educational goals, as well as executive functioning, emerged as key significant predictors of academic engagement, behaviors, and achievement. Parent, teacher, and peer support also significantly explained a portion of the variance in academic engagement, behaviors, and achievement. These findings are discussed with regard to their usefulness in developing specific interventions to target each of the investigated variables to ultimately increase student engagement, behaviors, and achievement.

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