School burnout and engagement profiles among digital natives in Finland : a person-oriented approach

• Applying a person-oriented approach, this study set out to examine what profilesof school engagement and school burnout (i.e., exhaustion, cynicism, inadequacy)can be identified among elementary school children at age 12, a generation alsooften referred to as the generation of digital natives. We compared the groupmemberships in their use of socio-digital technologies and related functioning aswe expected to find a gap between some digital natives and current educationalpractices which do not include socio-digital technology in feelings of cynicismtowards school. Latent profile analysis identified five groups: Engaged (50%)students, who formed the majority; Stressed (4%) students, who reported highexhaustion and high inadequacy as a student; Students High in cynicism (burnoutgroup) (5%) with high scores on all the components of school burnout, particularlycynicism, but also on exhaustion and inadequacy as a student; students Moderatein Cynicism (15%), whose cynicism was directed in particular towards studying andschool; and, finally, students Emerging Cynicism (bored group) (26%), whose feelingsof cynicism were nevertheless elevated. These results thus revealed that almosthalf (46%) of the elementary students felt some degree of cynicism towards school,thereby supporting our gap hypothesis: these groups of cynical students reportedthat they would be more engaged at school if socio-digital technologies wereused at school. These results indicate that one way to promote the engagementof cynical students might be to offer them the possibility to make greater use ofsocio-digital technologies at school.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Didaktik (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Didactics (hsv//eng)

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