My future, my present: Exploring general and domain-specific future orientation impact on classroom engagement, educational utility and *grades for middle school students.

Abstract

Students' behavioral, cognitive and emotional engagement in the classroom is essential for their success (Fredricks, Blumenfeld, & Paris, 2004). Future orientation research provides both a conceptual framework for examining the content and structure of adolescents' thoughts for their future and a theoretical understanding of the process through which future orientation influences current engagement and attitudes toward schooling. This dissertation project examined the association between future orientation and students' academic outcomes in a relatively ethnically diverse sample of 212 sixth, seventh and eighth grade boys and girls. The primary objective was to explore the relation of general and domain specific future orientation to students' classroom engagement, educational utility and cumulative grade point average. The study underscores the multidimensional nature of future orientation by examining the extent to which aspects of future orientation specific to a life domain (e.g. occupation) influence students' behaviors and attitudes above and beyond a more general future orientation. The life domains of education (college in particular) and occupation were the focus of the study because they should be closely tied to student engagement in and valuing of school. Success in college and future occupations is increased by earlier success in school and such goals are likely to be pursued by individuals who believe in the value of school (Brown & Jones, 2004). Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the college and occupation domains are two separate structures each with four distinct dimensions. Results duplicated previous research demonstrating the importance of a general future orientation for student's engagement and performance in school. The findings support the hypothesis that, even after taking into account students' general future orientation, college and occupation future orientation helps to explain variance in students' classroom engagement, context-specific educational utility, and cumulative grade point average. Findings also suggest that while the college and occupation domains are related they do have different implications for students' current performance and engagement in school. Results are discussed with regard to implications for strengthening students' adaptive behaviors and attitudes; and future research aimed at investigating the benefit of researchers focusing attention on domain-specific future orientations.