Early student engagement: measurement, associations, and implications for dropout prevention

There is little contention that student dropout is a pervasive and deleterious force affecting the U.S. educational system. In response to this crisis, dropout prevention and intervention have become salient focal points. Over the past 30 years, student engagement has arisen as a heuristic for conceptualizing early withdrawal and developing dropout prevention and intervention practices. This dissertation serves two purposes. First, a literature review detailing prior research regarding the conceptualization of the engagement construct, correlations between student engagement and dropout, and the importance of early intervention for students at-risk for disengagement is provided. Available measures of student engagement are then reviewed as well as associated limitations, practical applications, and directions for future research. Second, an empirical study examining the psychometric and measurement invariance properties of the Student Engagement Instrument- Elementary Version (SEI-E) is presented. Findings and implications for practice are discussed. Current results provide burgeoning evidence towards using scores obtained from the SEI-E as a valid indicator of the affective and cognitive engagement of upper elementary aged students.