Schreiber, B.Yu, Derek2018-08-012018-08-012016Schreiber, B. & Yu, D. (2016). Exploring student engagement practices at a South African university: student engagement as reliable predictor of academic performance. South African Journal of Higher Education, 30(5): 157 - 1751753-5913http://dx.doi.org/10.20853/30-5-593http://hdl.handle.net/10566/3915Student engagement is one avenue to explore how the experiences within and beyond the classroom impact student persistence behaviours. This article contributes to the sparse research in South Africa on the correlates of student engagement with academic performance at a Historically Disadvantaged University. The results suggest that engagement practices at this university differ across race and gender and that given the South African history we are able to generalise onto the South African higher education system. Influences on persistence and academic success are complex and require a comprehensive approach which embraces the entire context into which student persistence behaviours are embedded. Student engagement patterns are reliable predictors of academic performance and the trends across race and gender suggest that engagement and academic performance remain differentiated along race and gender.enSouth African Journal of Higher Education is an Open Access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, as underwritten by the license CC BY NC ND 4.0, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the authorStudent engagementRetentionPersistenceAcademic performanceStudent learningStudent successArticle