Assessing School Engagement – Adaptation and Validation of “Engagement Versus Disaffection With Learning: Teacher Report” in the Swedish Educational Context

Abstract

To follow the trajectories of children's engagement in learning, validated measures of engagement appropriate for different ages and educational contexts are needed. The purpose of this study was to adapt and validate the school engagement questionnaire (Engagement Versus Disaffection with Learning: Teacher Report, EDL) in the Swedish educational context, and to investigate if it assesses the same construct as a measure of engagement used for children of preschool age. After translating the questionnaire to Swedish, cognitive interviews were conducted with six teachers to check for interpretability and relevance of the items. For psychometric validation, teachers of 110 6 to 7-year-old children filled out EDL on two occasions two weeks apart. On the first occasion, they also filled out the Child Engagement Questionnaire, a measure of global engagement intended for children of preschool age. Dimensional structure, convergent validity, test-retest reliability, and internal consistency of EDL were investigated. Factor analysis provided support for differentiating between behavioral and emotional components of school engagement. Measures of school and preschool engagement used in this study correlated highly, which provides support for using them to study the engagement of children as they develop, and their educational contexts change. The subscales of behavioral and emotional engagement showed good test-retest reliability and internal consistency.

Validation of the School Engagement Questionnaire Engagement Versus Disaffection With Learning: Teacher Report in Swedish 6th Graders

“…Besides the general disengagement factor which captured indicators of behavioural and emotional disengagement, items capturing symptoms of internalized and externalized emotional problems loaded onto separate factors. This questionnaire previously showed good convergent validity in comparison to a measure of preschool engagement, and good test–retest reliability (Ritoša et al, 2020). The current study further supports the use of positive engagement and disengagement subscales with the school-aged children, while the remaining items seem to capture antecedents of engagement that are related, but distinct from the engagement construct.…”

“…Exploratory factor analysis resulted in two factors, behavioural and emotional engagement, while behavioural and emotional disaffection items loaded negatively on the two corresponding engagement factors. Behavioural engagement factor showed good internal consistency (V = 0.96 [0.94, 0.97]) and test-retest reliability (r = .81, p < .001), while the emotional engagement factor showed good internal consistency (V = 0.94 [0.93, 0.96]) (Ritoša et al, 2020) and acceptable test-retest reliability (r = .71, p < .001).…”

“…EDL: TR has previously been translated to Swedish (Elevernas engagemang i lärande; EEL; Ritoša et al, 2020) following the COSMIN checklist for cross-cultural validation of instruments (Mokkink et al, 2010). The item relevance, dimensional structure, convergent validity, test-retest reliability, and internal consistency of the questionnaire have been investigated on a sample of six to seven-year-old preschool children (Ritoša et al, 2020). Pre-schoolers’ scores on EDL: TR correlated highly with their scores on the Children’s Engagement Questionnaire (CEQ; McWilliams, 1991), a measure of engagement for preschool children.…”

Measuring Student Engagement in Lessons Using an Experience Sampling Methodology: The Development and Validation of the Dynamic Engagement With Learning Questionnaire

“…One existing tool that aims to capture students’ lesson engagement is the Engagement versus Disaffection with Learning questionnaire (EDL). Based on the four subcomponents (i.e., behavioral engagement, behavioral disaffection, emotional engagement, and emotional disaffection), Skinner et al (2008) developed the EDL, which, over the years, has been applied in education research worldwide in various situations with different groups of respondents (e.g., Immekus & Ingle, 2019; Ritoša et al, 2020; Rodríguez-Medellín et al, 2020). The original EDL included 20 self-report items that used a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree).…”

Measuring children’s engagement in early childhood education and care settings: a scoping literature review

“…Recently, some attention has been given to investigating the measurement of child engagement in early childhood within the school engagement framework (Shafer & Wanless, 2022), but it is questionable if that framework is as suitable for measuring engagement of young children (Ritoša et al, 2020). It is harder to collect data about internal experiences such as emotional and cognitive engagement from young children (Varni et al, 2007), and the concept of child engagement in ECEC might be conceptualized differently than school engagement.…”