Learning Outcomes in Social Studies of Secondary School Students: Role of Student Engagement and Gender

The purpose of the present paper is to study the role of student engagement and gender along with their interaction on learning outcomes in social studies of secondary school students of Punjab. Sample (1022; Male=528 and Female=494) of the present study is all 9th Grade students studying in 27 government and 26 private Secondary schools situated in different parts of Amritsar and Gurdaspur districts and affiliated to Punjab School Education Board Mohali. Student Engagement of the students were measured with the help of Student Engagement Scale developed by Lam et al. (2012) and learning outcomes in social studies was measured with the help of learning outcomes in social studies test developed by the investigators. Test items contain for areas of social studies that is History, Economics, Political Science and Geography. One-way Anova followed by post hoc test revealed that students with high student engagement had better level of learning outcome in social studies than students with low student engagement. There was no significant difference in learning outcome in social studies of secondary school students on the basis of average and high level of student engagement. The secondary school students with average level of student engagement had better level of learning outcome in social studies than students with low level of student engagement.  Male students had higher learning outcome in social studies than female secondary school students. Significant main effect of student engagement and significant main effect of gender are dependent upon each other to explain learning outcome in social studies among secondary school students.