Tuomo Virtanen

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'Student engagement is a concept that provides practitioners a clear, comprehensive, flexible theoretical framework for understanding and guiding students’ behavior and academic achievement. It is practically rooted, easily generalized to a variety of educational situations. The key ideas of student engagement are easily communicated to school personnel. Furthermore, student engagement directs practitioners’ primary focus on the processes of fostering engagement (that is, developing engaging practices, improving the educational environment) instead of directly concentrating on students’ outcomes (such as grades) or individual characteristics (such as deficits or traits). Student engagement is of educational importance through its links to detrimental outcomes such as school dropout and the related economical costs. It is also a relevant factor that contributes to students’ academic and social efficacy across their lifespan and the adolescents’ overall quality of life. Given that student engagement is supposed to be more state-like than trait-like – and therefore partially malleable by manipulating the educational context – it is an important target of interventions aiming to improve students' academic success. Moreover, student engagement is a diagnostic tool that can be used to identify students who are at risk of low academic performance and dropping out of school. Finally, student engagement is a significant target of school reform efforts. At very general level, my thesis aims to deepen our understanding on Finnish lower secondary school students’ engagement with school. The thesis contributes to the developing of student engagement survey instrument (SEI-F

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