EXAMINING RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC ENGAGEMENT AND THEIR ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT: A CASE OF PUNJAB

This study was designed to explore secondary school students’ academic engagement and its relationship with their achievement. The (n=3200) students participated in this correlational study that were randomly selected from 80 schools of Punjab. Data were collected through the Academic Engagement Scale (AES) that consisted of 26 Likert-type statements. Validity was made sure by three educational experts while the reliability was confirmed through Cronbach’s alpha = 0.821. Descriptive and Inferential statistics were applied to analyze and interpret the results. Descriptive statistics’ results revealed that students have a competent level in academic engagement while results of inferential statistics (Pearson r test) indicated a positive moderate relationship between students’ engagement and achievement. Moreover, a significant gender-wise and administrative division-wise difference was found in students’ academic engagement. It is recommended that teachers could foster students’ academic engagement by considering the role of gender and locale. Furthermore, school administration may focus on improving students’ involvement in the classroom activities by providing flexible learning environment.