ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a study that investigates student engagement in higher education longitudinally, and focuses on the transition from the first to the second year of study within the different fields and disciplinary cultures. The study examines the some core dimensions of engagement, and their development in the transition from the first to second year. The aim of the study was to analyse changes in engagement between the first and second academic year. To achieve this goal, the data was analysed in two parts. First, a simple descriptive statistical comparison between the first- and second-year data was carried out. Second, the true engagement profiles for the first- and the second-year data were investigated using latent profile analysis (LPA), and changes in engagement profiles between the first and the second year were studied with latent transition analysis (LTA). Overall, there is a slight downward trend in the level of engagement at the transition from the first to second year of study.
