The Relationship between Investigative Courses and Learning Outcomes: Exploring the Mediating Effects of Students’ Engagement Levels

The purpose of current study was to investigate the structural relationships between the investigative courses and students’ learning outcomes, mediated by students’ engagement levels including high-level thinking, classroom efforts, participatory learning, faculty-student interaction, interpersonal relationships, and institutional supports. Research method was descriptive with a correlational design. The results showed that the model fitted the data well and explained the relationship between the variables. Also, based on the results, the relationship of investigative courses with high-level thinking, student classroom efforts, participatory learning, and faculty-student interaction was positive and significant. In addition, although the direct effect of the investigative courses on learning outcomes was not significant, its indirect effect, mediated by of participatory learning, was positive and significant. Furthermore, other mediating effects of the components related to levels of engagement were not significant.