# Factors influencing students' cognitive, behavioral, and emotional engagement

Aurélie Huret, Laurent Lardy, Philippe Dessus, Salomé Cojean

► To cite this version:

Aurélie Huret, Laurent Lardy, Philippe Dessus, Salomé Cojean. Factors influencing students' cognitive, behavioral, and emotional engagement. European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI), Aug 2025, Graz Austria, Austria. Unpublished, 2025, 10.13140/RG.2.2.26715.02085. hal-05237393

HAL Id: hal-05237393

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Submitted on 3 Sep 2025

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# Factors influencing students' cognitive, behavioral, and emotional engagement

Aurélie Huret, Laurent Lardy, Philippe Dessus, Salomé Cojean

Univ. Grenoble Alpes

## Literature review

* "Growing recognition that [engagement] is a multidimensional construct" (Nleme & Molinari, 2022)

* Three dimensions of engagement (Fredricks et al., 2004):

* Cognitive: psychological involvement in learning (e.g., mental effort, concentration)

* Emotional: positive and negative emotional reactions (e.g., enthusiasm, discouragement)

* Behavioral: student actions toward learning and activities (e.g., participation, manifest attention)

## Factors influencing engagement (Gerard & Rubio, 2020):

* Internal: originating from the student

* Pedagogical: method, approach

* Contextual: circumstantial elements of the course

The influence of these different factors on engagement has been little studied (Fredricks et al., 2004; Liu, 2024; Stoltzfus & Sukseemuang, 2018)

## What specific role(s) do they play in a three-dimensional approach to engagement, and precisely on each dimension?

### Hypotheses

**H1.** Effect of each of these factors on overall academic engagement

**H2.** Effect of each of these factors more importantly on a particular dimension of engagement:

Internal → Cognitive engagement, Pedagogical → Emotional engagement, Contextual → Behavioral engagement

And an effect of each of these factors on each dimension of engagement

**H3.** Different judgments of students' engagement from students vs teachers perception

### Method

#### Participants

* 208 university students ($m$ age = 29 yrs; 70 men; 138 women)

* 6 teachers ($m$ age = 58 yrs; 5 men; 1 woman)

* Total → 11 course sessions in different domains (e.g., management, law, education)

* Course duration: between 1 h 30 and 6 hours

#### Experiment protocol

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### Results

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**H3** Perception of student engagement: Experimenter perception ≈ Student perception ($W = 0.49, p < .05$*) ≠ Teacher perception

### Conclusion

* Major role of interaction quality in student engagement

* Nuanced role of course duration, need to refine and/or enrich measurement?

* Perspective: Refine objective measure of the variables under study and look at the difference in teacher-student perceptions (for example, what factors influence teachers' perceptions of their students' engagement?)

If is not so much the length of the class that makes the difference on students' engagement, but rather the quality of the teacher-students interactions.

So continue to build relationships, ask questions... — while keeping an eye on what your students perceive, because they don't (always) see things the same way you do!

### References

Fredricks, J. A., Blumenfeld, P. C., & Paris, A. H. (2004). School Engagement: Potential of the Concept, State of the Evidence. *Review of Educational Research*, 74(1), 59-109. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543074001059

Gerard, L., & Rubio, A. A. (2020). Sources d'influence de l'engagement des étudiants dans un dispositif de classe inversée à l'université : Le cas de PedagInnov. *Revue internationale de pédagogie de l'enseignement supérieur*, 36(1).

https://doi.org/10.4000/ripes.2212

Liu, X. (2024). Effect of teacher-student relationship on academic engagement: the mediating roles of perceived social support and academic pressure. *Frontiers in Psychology*, 15, 1331667. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1331667

Nleme Ze, Y. S., & Molinari, G. (2022). Développement et validation psychométrique d'une échelle de mesure de l'engagement des apprenants dans les forums de discussion des MOOC. *Distances et médiations des savoirs*, 40(40).

https://doi.org/10.4000/dms.8538

Stoltzfus, M., & Sukseemuang, P. (2018). Distribution of Instructional Time in Secondary, Non-Intensive Thai EFL Classes: Effects on Grammar Acquisition. *Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching*, 15(2).

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