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Abstract

This study examined how educators in a rural secondary school district describe the influence of mastery experiences on student engagement and persistence within academic intervention programs. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 18 certified educators (six core content teachers, six elective teachers, and six administrators) and a subsequent focus group conducted in a single rural South Carolina school district, this qualitative analysis extends a larger dissertation study on teacher perceptions of dropout-prevention interventions. Using Bandura's (1986, 1997) social cognitive theory and Astin's (1984, 1999) theory of student involvement as a dual conceptual lens, findings indicate that educators consistently identified visible, incremental evidence of progress, such as fluency charts, completion rates, and credit-recovery milestones, as the primary mechanism through which students experienced mastery and subsequently increased their engagement and persistence. Mastery experiences were described as cumulative rather than singular, as contingent on timely and interpretable feedback, and as most powerful when paired with student ownership of goals. Educators further described how intervention format and psychological safety conditioned whether mastery experiences could occur at all. These findings extend the literature by demonstrating how mastery experiences function as a practitioner-observable, design-relevant mechanism linking program structure to student motivation in under-resourced rural contexts. Implications for intervention design, teacher preparation, and future research are discussed.

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