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Most scholars have argued that student engagement positively predicts academic achievement, but some have challenged this view. We sought to resolve this debate by offering conclusive evidence through a meta-analysis of 69 independent studies (196,473 participants). The results revealed that (a) there was a moderately strong and positive correlation between overall student engagement and academic achievement, and an analysis of the domains of behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement showed that almost all had a positive correlation with students' academic achievement; and (b) a moderator analysis revealed that the relationship between student engagement and academic achievement was influenced by the method of reporting engagement, cultural value, and gender. Furthermore, the relationships of behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement with academic achievement were influenced by reporting method for engagement, cultural value, or gender.
Keywords: student engagement, behavioral engagement, cognitive engagement, emotional engagement, academic achievement, cultural value.
Student engagement refers to students being actively involved in their learning tasks and activities. This engagement not only appears to affect school changes directly, such as, teacher's professional identity, and school's positive atmosphere (Marks, 2000), but also seems to lead to improvement in academic achievement of students whose grades have been poor, and lowering levels of student dissatisfaction and dropout rates. Therefore, for the past 20 years, researchers have maintained a strong interest in student engagement and its various functions (Appleton, Christenson, Kim, & Reschly, 2006; Shernoff & Schmidt, 2008).
Academic achievement has consistently been regarded as an important outcome of student engagement. Although there is extensive empirical research on the relationship between the two, the results so far have been inconsistent. There are two major perspectives on this relationship. For example, Zhu (2010) found that there was a significant and relatively strong correlation between student engagement and academic achievement, and King (2015) concluded that academic achievement was positively correlated with behavioral and emotional engagement. Pietarinen, Soini, and Pyhältö (2014) found a positive correlation between cognitive engagement and academic achievement. The proposed mechanism underlying these relationships is that student engagement promotes academic success (Crossan, Field, Gallacher, & Merrill, 2003), which further promotes students' engagement with learning activities, thus forming "a virtuous cycle of learning" (Lei, Xu, Shao, & Sang, 2015; Wäschle, Allgaier, Lachner, Fink, & Nückles, 2014). Some researchers have pointed...