Motivated Disengagement From School

• In Event: Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: Motivation in Education SIG Poster Session 1

Abstract

Besides being important educational outcomes themselves, students’ academic self-concepts also predict additional outcomes such as course selection in the respective domains. Expanding the prevalent within-domain perspective, the present study tested whether mathematics and first language self-concept interacted in predicting students’ attitude toward school 2 years later. The multi-cohort design with N = 2019 students from n = 85 classes spans grades 5 to 9. Structural equation modeling revealed the expected latent interaction effect. Via their effect on domain-specific self-concepts, students’ relative standings in their reference groups thus seem to have potentially detrimental effects that have gone unnoticed so far: disengagement from school on a global level. By imposing particular frames of reference, ability grouping hence affects students’ attitudes toward school.

Authors

• Kerstin Schuette, Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education

• Friederike Zimmermann, Institute of Psychology, Kiel University

• Olaf Koeller, Leibniz Institute for Science and Math Education