Self-determination and Student Engagement among Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students

Student engagement mattered a lot in student development across different domains. Researchers have attempted to facilitate it through either implementing interventions or examining influencing factors. This study explores how students' self-determination is related to their engagement, by administering the AIR and the Student Engagement Scale to 214 deaf or hard-of-hearing (DHH) school students in mainland China. Results showed that participants with higher levels of self-determination scored higher on student engagement, while those with lower levels scored lower.This research pioneers in exploring the relationships between self-determination and student engagement among DHH school students in mainland China. However, all the DHH participants are educated in secondary schools for the deaf. This research employed senior students majoring in sign language instead of professional interpreters to administer the inventories, which may have influenced the results.This research indicated that university/school administrators, counsellors and teachers may provide more opportunities in or after class for students to handle tasks that require freedom and independence, or by encourage students to deal with more complex and less structured activities. DHH students may actively learn new things or assimilating surrounding information, which may help them to deal successfully with engagement tasks, and consequently increase their engagement.