Motivation and engagement levels of learning in early adolescents from low socio-economic districts in Sri Lanka
Keywords:
Confirmatory Factor Analysis, Early adolescents, Engagement, Exploratory factor analysis, Low socio-economic districts, MotivationAbstract
This study tried to find out the levels of motivation and engagement among early adolescents. Motivation and Engagement Scale-Junior School (MES-JS) was employed to collect data and the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was employed to measure the construct validity of the scale in relation to two low socio-economic districts. But it did not give a robust factor solution. Then, it was decided to conduct exploratory factor analysis (EFA). This paper aimed to investigate the EFA procedures conducted to derive a robust factor solution. MES-JS was administered among 100 Sinhala and 100 Tamil-medium eighth grade students (50 students from each gender) selected through the stratified random sampling method. Schools were represented by type 2 government schools which have the lowest achievement rates located in the Monaragala and Nuwara Eliya districts in Sri Lanka because they represented low socio-economic districts in Sri Lanka. The stratum used to select the students was based on the students’ ethnicity, gender, and the number of classes in Grade 8 in each school. This study used the PCA method of extraction to determine the final factor solution. The method used was the scree test in combination with eigenvalues to decide the number of factors to retain. The EFA analyses derived four factors in relation to early adolescents’ motivation and engagement in learning in two low socio-economic Sri Lankan districts. With an accurate and useful description of the underlying construct and with the theoretical meaning of the items in those factors, factors were named as “Failure Avoidance and Anxiety” (FAA), “Positive Motivation” (PM), “Uncertain Control” (UC), and “Positive Engagement” (PE). Further analyses should be employed using these newly derived factors to identify low socio-economic Sri Lankan early adolescents’ motivation and engagement in learning. Accordingly, those identified four factors will contribute to understand of motivation and engagement among early adolescents in low socio-economic districts as those were derived considering the characteristics of those students through the EFA.
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