It's Good Until It's Not: The Curvilinear Relationship Between Affective School Engagement and Career and Technical Education Participation

Abstract

Practitioners, researchers, and policymakers are interested in the potential of Career and Technical Education (CTE) to improve student outcomes by increasing students' affective engagement - their feelings of belonging at school and valuing what they are learning. Little research has studied the relationship between the breadth of participation in CTE and affective engagement; however, to help fill in this gap, this paper draws on data from a large, multi-ethnic high school, to examine the linear and non-linear relationships of participation in CTE with affective engagement at school. Results of multiple regressions revealed curvilinear relationships between students' affective engagement and the number of CTE courses they took and the number of afterschool and weekend hours spent working on CTE related businesses. These findings suggest a middle-range mix of CTE and academic courses are associated with higher levels of affective engagement with school.