Sense of Belonging to School in 15-Year-Old Students
The Role of Parental Education and Students’ Attitudes Toward School
Abstract
Abstract. Worldwide, students’ health and subjective well-being increasingly are regarded as important. One central noncognitive aspect that threatens students’ well-being and that is related to students’ socioeconomic background is whether they feel they belong to their social context (e.g., school) or instead feel socially ostracized. The present study investigated the relation between parents’ education and students’ sense of belonging to school and the role of students’ and parents’ attitudes toward school as mediators across different countries. The results indicate that students whose parents have a higher education level feel less socially excluded. As expected, students’ attitude functions as a mediator: The more educated the students’ parents, the more positive the students’ attitudes toward school. Likewise, the more positive their attitude, the stronger they indicated a feeling of social belonging and the less they indicated feeling socially excluded. Further, more individualistic countries show a weaker effect.
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