Students’ extent of classroom engagement, transcending mere attendance: Do knowledge and attitudes matter?

Abstract

This study was conducted to determine the extent of student classroom engagement at three pre-World War II Philippine Baptist seminaries. The study also determined students’ knowledge concerning the potency of physical and mental attendance and their attitudes and perceptions concerning engagement in the classroom to discover that, in fact, they do transcend mere attendance. This study determined whether or not knowledge and attitudes do matter when examining the question of student classroom engagement. The methodology used was a cross-sectional design, which employed descriptive, correlational methods. Quantitative data were gathered via a researcher-prepared, self-administered questionnaire. The target population was full-time students at three Philippine Baptist seminaries. The statistical tools utilized were SPSS, Version 14 and Microsoft’s Excel. The findings of the study showed the unique student characteristics of a Philippine seminary population, such as, males out-numbered females two to one. Attendance has both an active and passive component. Attitudes drove actions, and the multifaceted dynamics of the engagement construct shaped total classroom engagement on multiple levels. Attendance was found to be significantly related to attitudes toward engagement, and attitudes were significantly related to overall engagement and all sub-scales of engagement. The researcher concluded that the null hypotheses of overall behavior and overall engagement, overall emotive and overall engagement, and overall cognitive and overall engagement were rejected. Consequently, it was concluded that there is a significant correlation between overall behavior and overall engagement, between overall emotive and overall engagement, and overall cognitive and overall engagement, thus the null hypothesis is rejected. This was understood to mean that the more students were engaged in the unique behaviors, emotions, or cognitions of the various sub-scales, the more prone they were to be engaged in the classroom with the multifaceted construct of engagement.