Successful PhD defense at the IfE

Laura McCullaugh (Research Group Research Methods/Emprical Educational Research) succesfsully defended her PhD on February 5, 2026 and earned the grade summa cum laude. Her dissertation, “The Measurement of Student Engagement: A Critical Examination of Operational Definitions and the Development of German-Language Scale,” investigates the construct “Student Engagement,” which includes the cognitive, behavioral, and affective dimensions of classroom participation. Although this construct is quite common in the English-speaking world, the definitions and operationalization of Student Engagement prove controversial. In her dissertation, McCullagh analyzes the theoretical ambiguities which contribute to an inconsistent operationalization of this term and develops approaches to overcoming this dilemma. Based on a qualitative content analysis of English-language self-report scales, she developed a German-language measuring tool. Under the framework of a confirmatory factor analysis, the a priori postulated measuring model achieved good fit values. The results from measure invariance and item analyses, as well as an evaluative content analysis of cognitive interviews, confirm the validity of the scale’s construction and suitability for use with students between the 4th and 6th grades. The scale will be available for research purposes when the dissertation is published.