Acceso usuarios
Socorro, Portugal
The study of a person’s attitude towards himself, self-concept, and towards school, school engagement, has been an important subject in the current scientific literature -particularly in the social-cognitive field -which refers the need for new studies and further investigation. Students’ engagement in school has been seen as a key-element in order to reduce academic failure and school drop-out. An approach with students from the Learning System in Alternation deserved special attention, due to the lack of investigation onthis professional training model. In this context and in line with the existent literature, the following research question was formulated: How are the student’s self-concept and school engagement characterized in the Learning System in Alternation? How are these variables related between themselves and with specific factors? In terms of methodology, the study focused on a sample of 440 students in the 10th, 11th and 12th grades, of the Professional Training Centers of Porto district and Entre Douro e Vouga region, from both urban and rural residences. The data collection tools were: Students Engagement in Schools: Four-dimensional Scale (Veiga, 2013); Piers-Harris Children’s Self-Concept Scale: short version with 30 items (Veiga & Leite, 2016); a set of questions about the main variables was also used, in line with the procedures, ethical principles and orientations of a scientific investigation. Concerning the self-concept, the results analysis showed a reasonable amount of students with low self-concept and significant correlations between some of the self-concept dimensions and the variables “age”, “school grades”, “creativity”, but not “family cohesion”. Regarding the school engagement, the study detected a considerable subgroup of students with low engagement, revealing the existence of significant relations between some engagement dimensions and the considered variables –“self-concept”, “age”, “gender”, “grades”, “creativity”, but not, again, “family cohesion”. This study includes the results interpretation and discussion aligned with the literature review, limitations, applications, as well as suggestions to future investigations.
Um estudo com alunos do Sistema de Aprendizagem em Alternância mereceu atenção particular, dada a falta de investigação sobre este modelo de formação. A análise dos resultados, no que ao autoconceito diz respeito, permitiu observar notórias quantidades de alunos com autoconceito baixo, bem como relações significativas entre algumas das dimensões do autoconceito e outras variáveis. Quanto aos resultados no envolvimento dos alunos na escola, as análises detetaram um considerável subgrupo de alunos com baixo envolvimento.
