The relationships between school belonging and students' motivational, social-emotional, behavioural, and academic outcomes in secondary education:a meta-analytic review

This meta-analytic review examines the relationships between students' sense of school belonging and students' motivational, social-emotional, behavioural, and academic functioning in secondary education. Moreover, it examines to what extent these relationships differ between different student groups (grade level, SES), measurement instruments, and region. The meta-analysis included 82 correlational studies, published in peer-reviewed journals between 2000 and 2018. Results revealed, on average, a small positive correlation with academic achievement, and small to moderate positive correlations with motivational outcomes such as mastery goal orientations; with social-emotional outcomes such as self-concept and self-efficacy; and with behavioural outcomes such as behavioural, cognitive, and agentic engagement. A small negative correlation is observed with absence and dropout rates. Similar results are found across different student groups (grade level, SES). Although the results vary to some extent across measurement instruments and region, generally, the results reveal that school belonging plays an important role in students' school life

Perceived classroom goal structures as predictors of students’ personal goals

This study focused on the question of how to enhance a mastery-goal orientation in the classroom. We started from the perspective of the achievement goal theory, which assumes that the goals that students have (personal goals) relate to the goals that are set in the classroom (classroom goal structures). In classrooms where teachers focus on learning and effort -instead of normative standards and social comparison- mastery goals are enhanced. This type of classroom can be endorsed by focusing on the following classroom structures: Task design, Autonomy, Recognition, Grouping, Evaluation, and Time (TARGET). The present study investigated how classroom goal structures as perceived by students are related to students’ personal goals. Based on survey data from 501 students from three secondary schools in the Netherlands, we found that the Task design dimension, concerning designing challenging and varied tasks, and the Time dimension, concerning e.g., pacing, predicted both mastery-approach and avoidance goals. Our findings provide insight in how perceived classroom goal structures are related to students’ personal goals that focus on understanding/competence, thus informing teachers and educational developers where to start when it comes to improving student motivation