Student Engagement as a Dynamic and Relational Process: A Critical Review of the Construct and Its Implications for Educational Psychology

1. Introduction

Student engagement has become one of the most influential constructs in educational psychology and educational research. Its emergence is linked to attempts to understand why some students remain connected to school and to learning while others progressively develop forms of disaffection, academic failure, or dropout. This issue is especially relevant once it is recognized that school disengagement rarely constitutes a sudden event; instead, it can develop through gradual changes in participation, effort, identification with school, interpersonal relationships, sense of belonging, and the meaning students attribute to their educational experiences.

The line of research underpinning this article developed precisely within this framework. Candeias’s doctoral research focused on vocational and secondary education students in the Alentejo region of Portugal and examined relationships between engagement, personal and contextual factors, well-being, social support, and academic outcomes, involving 514 students (Candeias, 2014). This research treated the school as an ecological and systemic context for development and sought to understand engagement beyond merely behavioral indicators. The preventive relevance of the construct thus stems from the possibility of identifying processes of school disaffection before they take more serious forms.

One of the most persistent conceptual difficulties is the absence of a single, agreed-upon definition of engagement. This diversity reflects, on the one hand, the complexity of the phenomenon and, on the other, creates difficulties in comparing studies, selecting instruments, and evaluating interventions (Appleton et al., 2008). The evolution of the concept nevertheless allows for the identification of an important transition: from an understanding centered mainly on participation to an understanding of engagement as psychological, relational, and contextual investment.

2. From Participation to Psychological Investment: The Conceptual Evolution of Engagement

2.1. The Participation–Identification Model

Among the foundational conceptualizations is Finn’s (1989) participation–identification model, in which participation comprises behaviors such as effort, involvement in academic activities, completion of assignments, and participation in school activities, while identification involves a psychological bond with school and acceptance of its value. This distinction remains fundamental because physical presence or task completion do not, by themselves, allow one to conclude that psychological investment in learning exists.

2.2. The Multidimensional Model: Behavioral, Emotional, and Cognitive Engagement

Fredricks, Blumenfeld, and Paris’s (2004) review consolidated a multidimensional understanding of engagement across behavioral, emotional, and cognitive dimensions. Behavioral engagement refers to observable participation, effort, persistence, and compliance with school tasks and rules. Emotional engagement encompasses affective responses toward school, teachers, peers, and learning activities, including interest, enjoyment, enthusiasm, belonging, identification, boredom, and frustration. Cognitive engagement concerns the psychological investment in learning, including strategy use, self-regulation, deep processing, metacognition, and persistence in the face of complex tasks.

2.3. Agentic Engagement and Differentiated Functions

The subsequent incorporation of agentic engagement added a dimension of particular relevance to educational psychology, as it recognizes the student as an active participant in shaping the conditions of learning. Asking whether a student is engaged is therefore no longer sufficient; it is necessary to ask how the student is engaged, in relation to what experience, and with what consequences. The meta-analysis by Reeve and colleagues (2025), based on 652 effect sizes drawn from 62 studies and involving 32,403 students, found differentiated functions across the dimensions of engagement: behavioral engagement showed the strongest relationship with achievement, agentic engagement was particularly associated with social support, and emotional engagement showed a meaningful relationship with motivation and well-being.

3. The Relational and Contextual Nature of Engagement

3.1. Teacher Support and Social Relationships

The relational nature of engagement constitutes another important transformation of the construct. School is not merely the physical location where learning occurs, but a social context in which students build relationships, construct meaning, and develop feelings of belonging. Teacher support is particularly relevant in this domain. A meta-analysis by Vargas-Madriz, Konishi, and Wong (2024), encompassing 141 studies and more than 525,000 students, found a moderate positive association between teacher support and school engagement; emotional support from teachers also showed a positive association with engagement.

Social relationships should therefore be understood simultaneously as antecedents, experiences, and possible consequences of engagement. The teacher–student relationship can foster safety, perceived competence, autonomy, encouragement, and belonging; peer relationships can contribute to integration and participation; and family can constitute a relevant source of support. Consistent with this view, a systematic review by Santos and colleagues (2023) linked students’ social and emotional competencies to school engagement, reinforcing the idea that relational and socio-emotional resources, and not individual traits alone, help explain how engagement develops. This perspective moves away from an individualizing interpretation of school disaffection and favors a person-in-context model.

3.2. Sense of Belonging

A sense of belonging occupies a particularly relevant position within this framework. A student who perceives school as a space where they are recognized, respected, and valued is more likely to develop a psychological bond with that context. Participation can strengthen identification and belonging, but belonging can also facilitate participation. The relationship should therefore be understood as potentially reciprocal and dynamic.

3.3. Engagement and Well-Being

The relationship between engagement and well-being constitutes one of the most promising areas of contemporary research. The doctoral research underlying this work already linked engagement to psychological well-being and social support, recognizing that school participation can provide relationships, belonging, and developmental opportunities (Candeias, 2014). Recent evidence continues to support positive associations between engagement and subjective well-being, but also reveals important limitations in determining the direction of causality. The scarcity of longitudinal studies and the conceptual diversity of both constructs preclude simplistic conclusions according to which engagement would automatically produce well-being or, conversely, well-being would necessarily determine engagement.

It is therefore more appropriate to consider reciprocal models in which context, relationships, belonging, engagement, and well-being mutually influence one another. This formulation has important methodological implications. If engagement is dynamic, research must move beyond exclusively cross-sectional designs and seek to understand trajectories of engagement over time, particularly during moments of educational transition, changes of school cycle, entry into vocational education, and the transition to higher education.

4. Implications for Assessment and Intervention in Educational Psychology

From the standpoint of educational psychology, this conceptualization also implies a shift in assessment practice. Attendance, grades, and classroom participation are relevant indicators, but on their own they do not capture emotional, cognitive, or agentic investment. A more complete assessment should consider the different dimensions of engagement, sense of belonging, social support, the quality of relationships, well-being, and the characteristics of the educational context.

This approach is consistent with the professional framework for educational psychology in Portugal. The Ordem dos Psicólogos Portugueses (Portuguese Psychologists’ Association) recognizes psychological assessment and technical-scientific intervention activities, including promotion and prevention, across the various contexts relating to individuals, groups, organizations, and communities (Ordem dos Psicólogos Portugueses, 2023). The Referencial para a Intervenção dos Psicólogos em Contexto Escolar (Framework for the Intervention of Psychologists in the School Context), approved in 2024, seeks to strengthen intervention based on scientifically grounded models (Direção-Geral da Educação & Ordem dos Psicólogos Portugueses, 2024). The Code of Ethics currently in force further requires a scientifically up-to-date practice and continuous professional development (Ordem dos Psicólogos Portugueses, 2016).

5. Engagement in Digital and Artificial Intelligence Environments

The development of artificial intelligence and other digital environments adds a new dimension to the study of engagement. A systematic review of studies on ChatGPT and engagement found simultaneous evidence of both engagement and disengagement, with research on behavioral engagement more developed than research on cognitive engagement (Lo et al., 2024). Among the risks identified are excessive reliance, a decline in critical thinking, and forms of use that may substitute for, rather than support, cognitive effort. A meta-analysis published in 2025 found a medium-sized positive effect of ChatGPT-supported learning on engagement, while also highlighting risks related to over-reliance (Heung & Chiu, 2025).

The implication is not that technology should be regarded as an automatic cause of greater engagement. Rather, technology alters the conditions under which engagement can occur. The pedagogical effect of artificial intelligence tools depends on task design, teacher mediation, student agency, digital literacy, the quality of feedback, and the ethical use of technology. The central question thus becomes understanding the conditions under which such tools can foster genuine cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and agentic engagement.

6. Discussion

The literature reviewed allows for the identification of four fundamental transitions: the shift from participation to psychological investment; the shift from an individual trait to a relational and contextual process; the shift from a unitary construct to partially differentiated dimensions; and the shift from an educational outcome to an opportunity for prevention and intervention. Taken together, these transitions suggest that engagement is best understood not as a fixed attribute that students either have or lack, but as an emergent property of the interaction between students and the educational contexts in which they are embedded.

7. Conclusions

In sum, student engagement should be conceptualized as a multidimensional, dynamic, and relational process. Its different dimensions show differentiated relationships with academic, motivational, social, and well-being outcomes, and engagement cannot be separated from the contexts in which students learn and develop. The contemporary challenge does not consist merely of increasing participation, but of creating educational contexts in which students can participate, think deeply, experience positive emotions, establish meaningful relationships, feel that they belong, exercise agency, and preserve their psychological well-being.