School context, achievement motivation, and academic engagement: A longitudinal study of school engagement using a multidimensional perspective

•A multidimensional perspective was used to study the contextual and motivational predictors of school engagement.•School engagement includes three components: behavior, emotion, and cognition.•School engagement is a malleable state that can be shaped by school context.•School environment predicted school engagement through academic motivation.•These associations were moderated by student academic ability.

This longitudinal study adopts a multidimensional perspective to examine the relationships between middle school students' perceptions of the school environment (structure support, provision of choice, teaching for relevance, teacher and peer emotional support), achievement motivation (academic self-concept and subjective task value), and school engagement (behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement). Participants were from an ethnically diverse, urban sample of 1157 adolescents. The findings indicated that student perceptions of distinct aspects of the school environment contributed differentially to the three types of school engagement. In addition, these associations were fully or partially mediated by achievement motivation. Specifically, student perceptions of the school environment influenced their achievement motivation and in turn influenced all three types of school engagement, although in different ways. Moderation effects of gender, ethnicity, and academic ability were also discussed.