چکیده
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A convergent parallel mixed-methods approach was used to explore teacher care, teacher-student
rapport, and engagement in pursuing academic goals in a foreign language (L2) context, as
perceived by 223 Iranian and 208 Polish L2 students. Quantitative data were obtained through
three scales, the cross-cultural validity and factor structure of which were ensured through testing
measurement invariance and confirmatory factor analysis, respectively. The structural equation
modeling results obtained through running Mplus approved that care and rapport predicted
Iranian and Polish students’ engagement in pursuing academic goals in an L2 context. For
checking the equality of the structural path coefficients, the Omnibus Wald test was employed.
Group differences in factor means were tested, showing that Iranian and Polish students differed
significantly regarding their levels of engagement. Qualitative data, obtained through running
interviews with 30 Iranian and 24 Polish students, selected from the initial sample, approved the
predictive links of care and rapport with Iranian and Polish students’ engagement in pursuing
academic goals in an L2 context. However, the students’ qualitative reports revealed how their
perceived country’s cultural and instructional contexts influenced their engagement, empirically
supporting the supposition that engagement is the by-product of the dynamic interaction between
the individual factors and the instructional context, necessitating the examination of the role of
sociocultural values and home culture in accomplishing this educational objective.
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