Developing an Educational Package based on Motivational Psychotherapy and Its Effectiveness on Students' Academic Engagement

Abstract

Introduction and Aim: One of the important variables that can be studied in students is the variable of academic engagement, which plays an effective role in improving other academic variables. Therefore, the present study was conducted with the aim of developing an educational package based on motivational psychotherapy and its effectiveness on students' academic engagement.

Methodology: The present research was a quasi-experimental study with a pre-test and post-test design with a control group. The population of this study was all male students of Imam Khomeini school of Gonabad city in the 2022-2023 academic years, which 50 people of them were selected by purposive sampling method and randomly assigned to two equal groups. The experimental group underwent 8 sessions of 90 minute by motivational psychotherapy, and the control group remained on the waiting list for training. The data of the present study were collected with the Academic Engagement Questionnaire (Reeve, 2013) and analyzed with the multivariate analysis of covariance method in SPSS software.

Findings: The findings of the present research indicated that the educational package based on motivational psychotherapy increased students' academic engagement and all four of its components, including behavioral engagement, agentic engagement, cognitive engagement, and emotional engagement (P<0.001).

Conclusion: According to the above findings, school counselors and psychologists can use a educational package based on motivational psychotherapy alongside other effective methods to improve students' academic engagement.