The Developmental Contextual Model of Educational Aspiration developed by Vondracek, Lerner and Schulenberg (1986) states that individuals live in multiple social contexts which may have risk and protective factors affecting students’ educational aspirations. School environment is one of the social contexts that affect construction of students’ educational aspiration. This context may also be related with students’ engagement in schools which may lead to high aspiration.
A quantitative research study was conducted with a total of 613 high school students (263 males and 350 females) selected from four basic education schools in 2019. To measure the students’ educational aspiration, student engagement and school environment, Educational Aspiration Scale (Prasad & Sherly, 2007), Students’ Engagement in School (Veiga, 2013) and School Environment Inventory (Mishra, 1983) were used respectively. In this study, school environment was regarded as the social context, and student engagement as one of the protective factors that affect construction of students’ educational aspiration.
According to the result of this path analysis study, school environment and student engagement want to be presented as positive significant predictors of educational aspiration of high school students. Moreover, Student Engagement can serve as the mediator which can explain the relationship between School Environment and Educational Aspiration. So, this result strongly confirmed this Developmental Contextual Model of Educational Aspiration.
Therefore, it is undoubtedly significant that school environment and student engagement play a crucial role in creating educational aspiration of high school students. In order to improve educational aspiration of high school students, their school environment and engagement should be improved first. Therefore, the following suggestions want to be presented for the welfare of high school students.
In order to improve school environment of high school students, teachers should create appropriate environment to present new thoughts, should train to behave positive behaviors and should help school activities such as seminars, workshops, debates and extracurricular activities. To improve school engagement of high school students, teacher should make students to have a sense of belongingness and commitment as a first priority. And teacher should help them to involve, engage and participate in school process and should encourage them to have good attitudes toward school. By following the above suggestions, Educational aspiration of high school students will increase certainly.
References
- Fred W. Vondracek, Richard M. Lerner, John E. Schulenberg, “Career Development: A Life-span Developmental Approach”, 1st Edition, Routledge, 1986.
- Krishna Prasad, Sherly, “Educational Aspiration Scale”, College of Education Attoor, Kanyakumari District, 2007.
- Feliciano H. Veiga, “Promoting Student Engagement in School”, “International Journal of Developmental and Educational Psychology, INFAD Revista de Psicologia, 1(1), 441-450, 2013.
- Karuna Shanker Mishra, “School Environment Inventory”, “Ankur Psychological Agency,22/481, Indira Nagar, Lucknow-226016”, 1983.