| dc.description.abstract | The purpose of this research study was to establish the relationship between school contextual factors, teacher competency, talent management and student engagement in private secondary schools in Naddangira zone, Wakiso district. The study was prompted by a series of strikes, continued malpractices that had led to the withdrawal of examination centers and expulsion cases that had prevailed among the zonal schools for a period of four years. Due to this concern, the variables that were believed to influence student engagement from the literature review were identified as; school contextual factors, teacher competency and talent management.
The research methodology was correlation cross sectional survey design that was used to study student engagement and quantitative method of data analysis was used to measure student engagement. The study was carried out in purposively selected private secondary schools that had lasted for at least five years and with more than 500 students. In this study, questionnaires were administered to 200 teachers and 200 student leaders to assess student engagement. Teacher ratings of student engagement revealed that when teachers are competent, students are engaged. However, when students rated themselves, they revealed that they were always disengaged despite their teachers being competent and school contextual factors had nothing to do with their levels of engagement in school.
Upon these results, the researcher concluded that student engagement is predetermined by the prevailing conditions in school and at home. Therefore all schools should endeavor to provide favourable learning environment. Parents on the other hand are very influential in determining student engagement in secondary schools hence should always be supportive to the students in terms of checking on their conduct at school regularly and making a follow-up on their performance.
The capability of teachers greatly affects the level of student involvement in school activities since teachers are models that students imitate. The more teachers guide students on what they ought to do and not to do, the more likelihood of students to conform to the desired practices. Therefore, teachers should always be conscious of their conduct since students usually follow the footsteps of their teachers for instance, a teacher who presents untidy work to his or her class, his class will have a very high likelihood of presenting untidy work both in exams and in their books.
All schools need to embrace talent management by providing favourable school policies that will promote talent attraction, talent development and talent retention.
Basing on the research findings, the following recommendations were drawn:
1. Research should be done to find out other factors that undermine student engagement.
2. Competency of teachers needs to be enhanced through talent development.
3. Favourable school contextual factors need to be upheld in schools for teacher competency and student engagement.
Areas for further research identified by the researcher included;
1) Further research should be conducted on ways of promoting talent management in secondary schools since talent management is not fully practiced in schools.
2) Further research should also be done to establish the relationship between student ages on their levels of engagement.
3) The research instrument used in this needs to be improved to increase its reliability. | en_US |
