School engagement and high school expectations for the transition to high school

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to understand the relationships between socio-demographic variables such as school engagement and extracurricular participation, and high school expectations, to use these psychosocial variables to determine the marginalization of students, and to determine which variables were stronger predictors for students’ expectations for their transition into high school. The results of this study point to the importance of school engagement and extracurricular participation as facilitators of the transition to high school from middle school. There were strong relationships between extracurricular participation, engagement in school, and expectations for the transition into high school. Results also indicate that students who are severely marginalized, that have low engagement and participation in extracurricular activities, have low expectations for high school success. Although these students’ families’ economic well-being and their mothers’ education attainment provide some vi information allowing prediction of their high school expectations, engagement and extracurricular participation were much stronger predictors for determining the students’ expectations for high school. Latino students in this study were more likely to be severely marginalized than all other students. The findings of this study suggest that using psychosocial variables to determine the marginalization of students is much more useful than using socio-demographic variables such as ethnicity, home language, parents’ educational attainment, or gender.