Prediction of Students’ Academic Engagement Based on Social and Psychological Capitals

Some of the major challenges to teaching in classrooms and schools are students’ anergia, reluctance and sloth in academic affairs, which usually cause dissatisfaction among educators. Therefore, the main purpose of the present research was to investigate the students’ academic engagement based on social and psychological capitals. The statistical population consisted of high school students (junior and senior) of the city of Dehloran in the academic year 2018-2019, a sample of out of which 321 persons were selected through cluster sampling. Data collection tools were standard questionnaires of Rio’s Academic Engagement (2013) Luthans’s Psychological Capital (2007) and Social Capital, whose validity and reliability were examined according to experts’ opinions, and a reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) of 0.86 was obtained. The results showed that the means of all three variables of academic engagement, social capital and psychological capital were at an average level. Pearson’s correlation test indicated that social capital (r=0.54 and p≤0.000) and psychological capital (r=0.62 and p≤0.000) have direct significant relationship with academic engagement. Regression analysis results showed that psychological capital and social capital predicted academic engagement as R2=0.40 and R2=0.34 respectively. Moreover, both variables could predict the changes of variance of the dependent variable as R2=0.43. Accordingly, it can be concluded that these two capitals can affect students’ academic engagement. Hence, special attention should be paid to these capitals.