Educational policy strategies give work-based learning (WBL) and dual learning pathways a prominent role in strengthening student engagement. Given this mounting policy attention, the current study aims to fill a knowledge gap with regard to the relation between WBL and student engagement, particularly within the context of dual pathways combining school- and work-based learning. To this end, we situated student engagement in the wider motivational framework of the self-system model of motivational development (SSMMD) to help theorize its antecedents in students' learning contexts and psychological self-system processes. The main purpose of this study was to test the hypotheses based on the SSMMD within a WBL context and to relate student engagement in WBL to engagement in school-based learning. As most measurements of the elements making up the SSMMD were validated within a school-based learning context, we used confirmatory factor analyses to test the measurement transferability to a WBL context. Our findings show the relevance of applying the SSMMD to the context of WBL, hereby confirming the facilitating or inhibiting role of a WBL context in fulfilling the basic psychological needs of needs of autonomy, relatedness and competence, which in turn supports engagement in WBL. Our findings also show the potential to study work- and school-based learning as two interrelated learning contexts, stimulating researchers, policy makers and practitioners to further study and invest in dual learning pathways that purposefully combine learning in school- and work-based contexts.