Influence of teaching approaches, socioeconomic status and gender on classroom engagement of college students’ in the city of Xingtai in China

Abstract

Effective teaching has a direct and indirect influence on students' daily life and future success. The use of effective teaching methods can stimulate students' classroom engagement, and students’ engagement is related to positive learning outcomes. In this research, the teaching approaches studied were divided into student-centered and teacher-centered. In China, many teachers tend to adopt a teacher-centered approach, and students’ engagement in the classroom seems unsatisfied. This research aims to explore the influence of teaching approaches, socioeconomic status and gender on classroom engagement of college students in Xingtai City, Hebei Province, China. In this quantitative study, a cluster sampling method was used to conduct a questionnaire survey on 302 students from a college in Xingtai City and then collect data. Data analysis showed that teaching approaches have an impact on students' classroom engagement. At the same time, research has found that female students have higher classroom engagement than male students. However, the socioeconomic status of students and classroom engagement did not show a significant correlation. In general, this research provides support for exploring the influence of teachers' teaching approaches, students' gender and socioeconomic status on students' classroom engagement. Future research needs to use different instruments and more variables (such as students’ culture or sibling rankings, etc.) to investigate the issue of student engagement in order to enrich the information on this issue.