Experiences and the construction of meanings of student engagement in professional and technological education

Abstract

Studies on student engagement have frequently privileged observable aspects of student participation, limiting the understanding of how engagement is constituted in the context of Professional and Technological Education offered through Distance Education (EPT|EaD). Thus, this article seeks to understand student engagement in EPT|EaD, with an emphasis on students' experiences and the meanings they construct, in light of Cultural-Historical Theory and in dialogue with the expanded sociocultural approach to engagement. The study adopted a mixed-methods design involving students enrolled in technical education program, with 77 participants in the quantitative phase and 10 in the qualitative phase. The findings indicate that student engagement is a multidimensional, relational, and socially situated phenomenon in which behavioral, cognitive, affective, and agentic dimensions are articulated interdependently, although the latter showed lower levels of expression. The results also revealed tensions between students' living conditions and academic demands, whose effects reverberate throughout learning experiences and the decisions made along students' educational trajectories. The findings highlight the need for institutional policies and pedagogical practices that recognize the plurality of forms of student engagement and the actual conditions that support students' persistence.