Exploring the roles of academic, personal, and cultural demands and resources in immigrant students' motivation, engagement, and achievement

Background The present investigation applied the academic and cultural demands-resources (ACD-R) framework to better understand the academic development of immigrant high school students. Aims Analyses sought to test the hypothesized contribution of academic demands (e.g., learning-disrupted teaching) and resources (e.g., autonomy-supportive teaching), personal demands (e.g., fear of failure) and resources (e.g., adaptability), and cultural demands (e.g., discrimination) and resources (e.g., cultural confidence) in predicting motivation (self-efficacy, valuing)—and, in turn, the extent to which motivation predicted academic outcomes in the forms of engagement (persistence, non-attendance) and performance (achievement). Sample Drawing on PISA (2018) data, the sample comprised 4886 immigrant students: 3329 from Australia and 1557 from New Zealand. Method Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was first conducted to ascertain the psychometric properties of the study's measures and then the central analyses employed structural equation modelling (SEM) to test hypothesized paths. Results After demonstrating good CFA fit, SEM revealed that particularly salient (at p < 0.001) demand and resource predictors of motivation were: warmth-supportive teaching (positively), fear of failure (negatively), adaptability (positively), discrimination (negatively), cultural communication skills (positively), and cultural confidence (positively). Also, self-efficacy and valuing significantly predicted persistence (positively) and non-attendance (negatively), while self-efficacy also significantly predicted achievement (positively). Conclusions The hypothesized ACD-R process is a viable means to understand immigrant students’ academic experience and to offer some fruitful direction for supporting their academic development.