“Don’t chat in class and pay attention”: Linking self-regulation and school engagement profiles with academic achievement

Behavioural and emotional self-regulatory skills facilitate children’s engagement with school-related activities, which is a critical antecedent of achievement. Yet, the question remains whether different profiles of behavioural and affective self-regulation and school engagement exist that differentially influence students’ achievement. Thus, the present study aimed to identify emerging profiles of self-regulation and school engagement and explore how those relate to students’ achievement. The sample comprises 13,847 (Mage=7.24, SD=.25) British primary school students (50.2% males), who participated in the Millennium Cohort Study. Parent-reported scores on students’ emotional and behavioural self-regulation were available. Students reported their behavioural and emotional school engagement and were also assessed using standardised word reading and maths tests. Latent profile analysis was conducted to identify distinct profiles of self-regulation and school engagement and the manual BCH method was deployed to explore mean-level differences in achievement across profiles. The results indicated that 63.77% of the students were highly self-regulated and engaged, whereas 29.96% were slightly dysregulated and slightly disengaged. 1.86% of the students were dysregulated but engaged, whilst 4.42% were disengaged and dysregulated. Adjusting for covariates, highly self-regulated engaged students had the highest means in reading and maths, whilst dysregulated but engaged students had the lowest means. The findings illustrated that most students with high levels of self-regulation and engagement scored higher in maths and reading. Students with incompatible levels of self-regulation and school engagement had the lowest scores across all profiles. Behavioural and emotional self-regulation and school engagement are needed to be academically flourishing.