scholarly journals Students’ school climate perceptions: do engagement and burnout matter?

Author(s):  
Luisa Molinari ◽  
Valentina Grazia

AbstractThis study, conducted with a person-oriented approach, aimed to assess whether students who are positively engaged in school activities and daily practices perceive their school climate differently from students who feel distant and less engaged in school. To achieve this aim, by means of a Latent Profile Analysis with the 3-step approach, we first identified student profiles on the basis of their levels of school engagement and burnout, and then verified whether the school climate perceptions differed for the various profiles. The study involved 1065 Italian middle-school students (49% females, Mage = 11.77). School climate perceptions were assessed with the Multidimensional School Climate Questionnaire. Multidimensional measures were used for student engagement and school burnout. Four student profiles, labelled Cynically disengaged (5.9%), Moderately disengaged (21.6%), Peacefully engaged (46.1%) and Tenseley engaged (26.4%), were identified. The first two profiles involved low levels of engagement and high levels of cynical burnout, with the former showing more extreme scores. The other two profiles depicted engaged students, with the latter also revealing feelings of pressure and disillusion. The four profiles differed in their school climate perceptions, with the Peacefully engaged students reporting the highest scores and the Cynically disengaged students embodying the most critical perceptions. The study’s educational implications are discussed.

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 3011
Author(s):  
Iris Estévez ◽  
Carolina Rodríguez-Llorente ◽  
Isabel Piñeiro ◽  
Rocío González-Suárez ◽  
Antonio Valle

School engagement occupies a place of reference in recent educational psychology research owing to its potential to address poor school results and school dropout rates. However, there is a need for a unifying theoretical framework. The study proposed the characterization of school engagement and explored the extent to which different profiles are associated with academic performance and self-regulation. With a sample of 717 5th and 6th year primary school students, this study was carried out via the latent profile analysis (LPA). Two groups of low school engaged students—one characterized by low behavioral engagement (5.02%) and the other by low emotional engagement (6.55%)—were distinguished. The majority of participants showed moderately high (31.95%) or moderate (56.48%) levels of school engagement in its three dimensions. Students with high engagement had the best grades and managed their time and study surroundings better, were the most strategic in seeking information, and showed less maladaptive regulatory behavior. The differences between students exhibiting low behavioral and emotional engagement and those exhibiting moderate levels in these dimensions may center upon the management of contextual resources and management of information and help. This research supports the need to approach the study of school engagement by observing the combination of its emotional, behavioral, and cognitive dimensions.


Author(s):  
Katharina Schnitzler ◽  
Doris Holzberger ◽  
Tina Seidel

Abstract Student participation and cognitive and emotional engagement in learning activities play a key role in student academic achievement and are driven by student motivational characteristics such as academic self-concept. These relations have been well established with variable-centered analyses, but in this study, a person-centered analysis was applied to describe how the different aspects of student engagement are combined within individual students. Specifically, we investigated how the number of hand-raisings interacts with student cognitive and emotional engagement in various engagement patterns. Additionally, it was analyzed how these engagement patterns relate to academic self-concept as an antecedent and achievement as an outcome. In an empirical study, high school students (N = 397) from 20 eighth-grade classrooms were surveyed and videotaped during one mathematics school lesson. The design included a pre- and post-test, with the videotaping occurring in between. Five within-student engagement patterns were identified by latent profile analysis: disengaged, compliant, silent, engaged, and busy. Students with higher academic self-concept were more likely to show a pattern of moderate to high engagement. Compared with students with low engagement, students with higher engagement patterns gained systematically in end-of-year achievement. These findings illustrate the power of person-centered analyses to illuminate the complexity of student engagement. They imply the need for differentiation beyond disengaged and engaged students and bring along the recognition that being engaged can take on various forms, from compliant to busy.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Simone Pettigrew ◽  
Liyuwork Mitiku Dana ◽  
Michelle I. Jongenelis ◽  
Ben Jackson

Abstract Being active in later life is key to remaining physically and mentally healthy, and health in turn influences individuals’ ability to remain active. Activity prevalence figures can disguise the existence of clusters of older people who are very active due to regular participation in multiple categories of activity versus those who are sedentary. The aim of this study was to conduct segmentation analyses based on retired seniors’ engagement in various activities (walking, active sport/exercise, gardening and volunteering) to identify groups characterised by varying patterns of participation. The sample comprised 746 Western Australians aged 60+ years (range 60–95 years, average age 71.66 years, standard deviation = 6.57), 61 per cent of whom were female. Using latent profile analysis, four distinct segments emerged. Those respondents classified as belonging to the most active group exhibited moderate to high levels of participation across all four forms of activity, and tended to be older and more educated than other respondents. Those allocated to the least active group had very low levels of participation across most of the assessed activities and the least favourable physical and mental health scores. Overall, the results indicate the existence of highly divergent segments within the older population in terms of participation across various combinations of health-promoting activities. Segment membership appears to be more closely associated with physical and psychological factors than socio-demographic characteristics.


Author(s):  
Chiara Malagoli ◽  
Carlo Chiorri ◽  
Laura Traverso ◽  
Maria Carmen Usai

AbstractThe Impulsivity/Reflexivity issue in inhibitory control ability has seldom been investigated in terms of individual differences in typically developing populations. Although there is evidence of changes in executive functioning (EF), including inhibition, in adolescence, very little is known about the role of individual differences. Using the data from 240 14-to-19-year-old high school students who completed a battery of EF tasks (Flanker, Go No-Go, Antisaccade, and Stop signal task), measures of emotion regulation strategies and behavioral difficulties, we performed a latent profile analysis to identify qualitatively distinct score profiles. The results showed the existence in adolescence of two inhibition profiles, Impulsive vs Reflexive, differing in performances at the inhibition tasks. The two profiles were not associated with socio-demographic characteristics, or to psychological variables, such as behavioral characteristics and emotional regulation strategies.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-300
Author(s):  
Jake McMullen ◽  
Kaisa Kanerva ◽  
Erno Lehtinen ◽  
Minna M. Hannula-Sormunen ◽  
Noona Kiuru

The present study aims to examine inter-individual differences in adaptive number knowledge in secondary school students. Adaptive number knowledge is defined as a well-connected network of knowledge of numerical characteristics and arithmetic relations. Substantial and relevant qualitative differences in the strategies and expression of adaptive number knowledge have been found in primary school students still in the process of learning arithmetic. We present a study involving 879 seventh-grade students that examines the structure of individual differences in adaptive number knowledge with students who have completed one year of algebra instruction. Results of a latent profile analysis reveal a model that is similar than was previously found in primary school students. As well, arithmetic fluency and the development of arithmetic fluency are strong predictors of adaptive number knowledge latent profile membership. These results suggest that adaptive number knowledge may be characteristic of high-level performance extending into secondary school, even after formal instruction with arithmetic concludes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yingping Mai ◽  
Yenchun Jim Wu ◽  
Yanni Huang

In the face of the sudden outbreak of coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19), some students showed resilience in coping with difficulties while some did not. While different types of students showed different levels of resilience, are there significant characteristics among students with similar levels of resilience? In this study, 3,454 students (aged 15–25 years) were surveyed to understand students' perceived social support-coping modes while investigating the demographic characteristics and mental health status of subclasses of different modes. We found that (1) in the two subgroups of students with extremely low and low levels of perceived social support, the source of students' perceived social support did not have a clear orientation; in the two subgroups with moderate and high levels of perceived social support, the most perceived emotional support was from family and friends, while the least perceived support was companionship from teachers, classmates, and relatives, and problems related to the dependability of friends and communication with family. (2) The degree of social support perceived by students is directly proportional to the coping tendency, i.e., as the degree of perceived social support increases, the proportion of students adopting active coping strategies increases while that of students adopting negative coping strategies decreases; thus, we concluded that high levels of emotional support from family and friends can increase students' tendency of adopting positive strategies to cope with difficulties, while problems related to the dependability of friends and communication with family decrease students' tendency of adopting positive coping strategies. (3) Gender had a significant impact on the extremely low and low levels of perceived social support-negative coping tendencies; these subgroups accounted for 34.6% of the total students. Gender showed no significant influence on other subgroups, a school type had no impact on the distribution of the subgroups. (4) The higher the degree of perceived social support, the lower is the degree of students' general anxiety, and the lower is the degree of impact by the COVID-19 pandemic. The subdivision of student groups allows us to design more targeted support programmes for students with different psychological characteristics to help them alleviate stress during the COVID-19 epidemic.


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