Effects of Contextual Factors, and Cognitive and Metacognitive Learning Strategies on Academic Engagement of Secondary School Students

The prime aim of this study was to examine the effects of contextual factors and cognitive and metacognitive learning strategies on secondary school students’ academic engagement by employing an ex-post facto prospective research design. The data were gathered through self-report questionnaires from a sample of 700 (348 females and 352 males) students selected via a multi-stage random sampling technique from nine secondary schools. To examine the direct and indirect effects of contextual factors and cognitive and metacognitive learning strategies on academic engagement, Structural Equation Modeling/SEM with Analysis of Moment Structures/AMOS test was used. The findings of Structural equation Modeling analysis revealed that contextual factors had a significant direct effect on academic engagement (β=.475, p=.000<.001), on cognitive strategies (β=.454, p=.000<.001), and on metacognitive strategies (β=.313, p=.000<.001). Moreover, it also revealed that metacognitive strategies had a significant effect on academic engagement (β= .889, p=.000<.001). However, the result reveals that cognitive strategies didn’t have a significant effect on academic engagement (β= .208, p=.213 >.001). Additionally, the results showed that contextual factors had a significant indirect effect on academic engagement through the mediation of metacognitive strategies (β = .356, p = .002). In contrast, the indirect effect of contextual factors on academic engagement through cognitive strategies was not statistically significant (β = .094, p = .505).