Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2025, Educational Studies

The overarching goal of this project was to understand how social regulatory processes may serve as a mechanism to help adolescents navigate socioemotional challenges and sustain their academic and social engagement within a collaborative learning unit. Grounded within a social cognitive framework, social regulatory processes consisting of students' use of self-regulated learning (SRL) and socially shared regulated learning (SSRL) strategies were examined as mechanisms that may support unit-long temporal patterns of student engagement. This research was further conducted within a summer enrichment program, an understudied context in social regulation and engagement research. Four research questions were utilized to guide the present research concerning 1) temporal patterns of engagement, their associations with 2) socioemotional challenges and 3) social regulation strategies, and 4) whether social regulation strategies moderate the relationship between socioemotional challenges and engagement. Participants included 72 middle school students in a five-week voluntary summer enrichment program. Students were enrolled in a project-based STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) unit. Following an event-contingent design, students completed a self-report survey after each of the four STEM project benchmarks within the unit. These surveys assessed five key constructs: academic engagement, social engagement, socioemotional challenges, SRL strategies, and SSRL strategies. Results indicated that academic engagement followed a negative linear pattern, slightly decreasing throughout the STEM unit, while social engagement remained relatively stable over time. SRL strategies positively predicted academic engagement both in the growth model and at specific time points, though were not associated with changes in academic engagement over time. Similarly, social engagement was positively predicted by SSRL strategies and marginally predicted by SRL strategies, but neither m (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Christopher Wolters (Committee Chair); Tzu-Jung Lin (Committee Member); Jerome D'Agostino (Committee Member); Eric Anderman (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Educational Psychology