The Relationship between Educational Social Structures, Socio-Economic Status and Cultural Capital of Family with Academic Engagement and Academic Achievement of Traditional and Distance Education Students

The purpose of this research was to investigate the contribution of socio - economic status, cultural capital of family and educational social structure variables in predicting academic engagement and academic achievement between distance education students and traditional education and also studying existing differences between students of these two groups. The research method was correlational. Participants were 700 undergraduate students in the academic year 92-93 which was selected using Morgan schedule and cluster random sampling. Data gathering tools were student's performance score and questionnaire .Pearson correlation, independent t-test and multiple regressions were applied for analyzing of data. The results indicate that although SEM status and cultural capital were effective in predicting academic engagement and academic achievement of each group; however, a great deal of distance educational student assessment was explained by these variables. Regarding traditional students, in addition to essential role of cultural capital of family, authors of this article observed, outstanding role of some other social structure dimensions of education such as teachers and students academic support to each other on traditional students educational outcome. Other results of this research showed considerable difference between distance and traditional students in many variables that were investigated in this research and preference of traditional students on distance students except in cognitive engagements.