Perceived school kindness and academic engagement: The mediational roles of achievement goal orientations

Perceptions of kindness at school have been linked to a few positive psychological outcomes including optimism, happiness, life satisfaction, and social goals. However, limited evidence has been generated on how kindness relates to academic-related outcomes. This study explored the association of pe...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:School psychology international 2019-10, Vol.40 (5), p.456-473
Main Authors: Datu, Jesus Alfonso D., Park, Nansook
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic Achievement
Approach-Avoidance
Bootstrap method
Cognitive bias
Cognitive-behavioral factors
Context Effect
Educational Environment
Educational psychology
Foreign Countries
Goal Orientation
Happiness
High School Students
Indirect effects
Kindness
Learner Engagement
Life goals
Life satisfaction
Optimism
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Perceptions of kindness at school have been linked to a few positive psychological outcomes including optimism, happiness, life satisfaction, and social goals. However, limited evidence has been generated on how kindness relates to academic-related outcomes. This study explored the association of perceived school kindness with different domains of academic engagement. It also examined whether school kindness would have indirect effects on engagement outcomes via the intermediate variables – achievement goal orientations (i.e., mastery-approach, mastery-avoidance, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance goals). Results showed that school kindness was positively correlated to agentic, behavioral, cognitive, and emotional engagement. Bias-corrected bootstrapping analyses demonstrated that perceived school kindness had indirect effects on behavioral engagement and cognitive engagement via the intermediate variables, approach goals. While mastery-approach goals mediated the link between perceived school kindness and emotional engagement, performance-approach goals mediated the association of perceived school kindness with agentic engagement. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.
ISSN:0143-0343
1461-7374
DOI:10.1177/0143034319854474