Authors : Fauziah Md Jaafar, Rafisah Osman and Fahainis Mohd Yusof
Abstract: Student engagement at tertiary education has been discovered as one of the important predictors of their academic performance and soft skill development. Astin’s theory of student engagement is often referenced in any studies that investigated student engagement. Based on previous studies, engagement among boys and girls in school student are found to behave differently in terms of their engagement. However, in university setting, several studies indicated that there were gaps between genders in the level of student engagement in higher education in Malaysia. But most of the finding is not consistent with each others. The purpose of this study to examine the significant differences between gender in the level of student engagement dimensions in Malaysian context. Using the survey research method, the study involved 347 final year undergraduates student who gave feedback. A test of Multivariate Analysis (MANOVA) was conducted in order to find out whether there are any significant gender differences in the level of student engagement, based on the four dimensions. The findings showed that there were significant differences for student engagement with academic staffs and student engagement in communities between the male and female students. Even though, there were no significant differences between the male and female students for student engagement with peers and student engagement in academic. The gender patterns of student engagement can be use as a guideline to the government and other stakeholders in education in Malaysia.
Fauziah Md Jaafar, Rafisah Osman and Fahainis Mohd Yusof, 2016. Student Engagement among University Students in Malaysia. The Social Sciences, 11: 7433-7437.