VET as a cure and a cause of student disengagement? Analyses of motivation and engagement of students in Flemish vocational education and training

The overall aim of my doctoral study was to uncover important mechanisms explaining student disengagement and hereby address the relatively high levels of early leaving from Flemish vocational education and training (VET). In this effort, the four published studies explored different strategies to move beyond the focus on individual level sociodemographic risk indicators in explaining early leaving, often dominating policy discourses. While my argument is that even though structural and systemic features are indispensable to understand and counter enduring educational inequalities, a sole focus on systemic features of an education system is insufficient. Therefore, in this dissertation I aimed to develop a comprehensive framework starting from the empirically supported rationale that early leaving – in most cases – is an endpoint of a gradual process of student disengagement. Hence, the four studies in this dissertation linked structural or systemic context (macro), learning context (meso) and student – so-called self-system – (micro-) level factors and processes to analyse student (dis-) engagement as a predictor for early leaving from vocational education and training. This is illustrated by the figure below: The first study supported the notion that the systemic and institutional context of urban VET schools in Flanders is a relevant context to study students’ strategies to cope with stereotype threat. This study disentangled if and how VET students who are negatively stereotyped for having low academic motivation and performance levels try to prevent this stereotype threat from harming their academic self-concept by (1) disconnecting their academic self-concept from their actual educational performances, (2) by discounting teachers’ negative feedback for being unfairly biased and (3) by personally disidentifying from the goals set in education. An important contribution of this study was to widen the scope of stereotype threat related studies to a stigmatised group identity that relates to the lower status educational track in which VET students oftentimes are perceived to be enrolled. The study also added to this scholarly work on stereotype threat effects by focussing on the impact of students’ learning context – i.e. teacher-student relations – on stereotype threat effects. When putting the findings of the first study within the broader framework of my doctoral thesis, adding the Self-system Model for Motivational Development (SSMMD), the preservation and further development of the self comes to the forefront, which in turn has an impact on students’ dispositions towards and engagement in education. In connection to the psychological needs on the basis of which the self-system model was built, i.e. feeling autonomous, related and competent, this thesis deduced stereotype threat related to VET students’ lower status track position to have the following effects on self-system processes: -Concerning feeling autonomous, the coping strategy of disidentifying from setting goals in education – occurring more often amongst VET students – predicts lower levels of autonomous motivation with regard to school-based learning because the goals set in the domain of education are less likely to correspond to the personal goals set by VET students. -With respect to feeling related, the more negative teacher-student relations clearly point toward lower levels of feeling related to school (staff) among VET students. -Negative stereotypes about VET students’ lower academic ability and motivation are harmful for their academic self-concept and in turn further reinforce the occurrence of psychological disengagement, discounting teacher feedback and personal disidentification from setting goals in education. The SSMMD therefore allowed to connect the self with support perceived within one’s context, whereas the stereotype threat effects theory helped to contextualise a stigmatised group of students’ preservation of the self within a stratified education system. However, even within an education system wherein sociodemographic background characteristics are important risk indicators for predicting ELET, there remains an important margin for beating the odds, or in other words, for educational resilience. In trying to grasp where the grounds for this educational resilience might lie, this thesis has built on the notion of student engagement and more in particular antecedents of student engagement in students’ (learning) contexts and self-system processes. The SSMMD provides a comprehensive model for studying the antecedents of student (dis-)engagement in VET students’ direct contexts – i.e. the family, school and workplace learning contexts – as well as the basic psychological needs that drive the development of the self and can therefore help to explain the level to which students are emotionally and behaviourally engaged in learning. The second and third study in this doctoral thesis disentangle the antecedents of student engagement in students’ family and school-based learning contexts. While most hypotheses based on the SSMMD were confirmed, some relations could not. In the general discussion section, the latter findings were brought in relation with other research on the particular position of VET in Flanders. The fourth study takes into consideration the work-based learning context of VET students. This study provided additional insights on measuring and deepening the understanding of the Self-system Model for Motivational Development in relation to student (dis-)engagement in the context of work-based learning. Overall, the findings provided empirical support that many tenets of the Self-system Model for Motivational Development for school-based learning hold true in a work-based learning context. It made visible the potential of studying work- and school-based learning as two interrelated learning contexts, stimulating scholars to research student engagement in school- and work-based learning in a hybrid manner and to further cross the boundaries between both domains of learning in the design of learning contexts.

ISBN:978-90-5728-699-5

Jaar van publicatie:2021

Trefwoorden:Doctoral thesis

Toegankelijkheid:Open