Date

3-2-2023

Department

School of Behavioral Sciences

Degree

Doctor of Education in Community Care and Counseling (EdD)

Chair

Brian Cambra

Keywords

school connectedness, academic outcomes, European secondary schools, American secondary schools, comprehensive schools, tracking schools, affective connectedness, behavioral and cognitive connectedness

Disciplines

Counseling | Educational Psychology

Abstract

Schools are often considered a community nested within a community. A caring school environment contributes to community and belongingness among students. School connectedness, the belief held by students that adults and peers in the school care about their learning and about them as individuals, is viewed as a construct comprising affective, behavioral and cognitive dimensions. School connectedness among students in the United States has been shown as a predictor of adolescent health and academic outcomes with positive feelings of school connectedness linked to positive outcomes. School connectedness research often centers on children and early adolescents and less over the high school and college years. Typically, studies have relied on the student’s immediate school experience when the social brain is radically changing. Research has been conducted principally in the United States and less is known about school connectedness from school systems with different educational approaches. In addition to neurodevelopmental differences between adolescents and young adults in the areas of cognitive and emotional processing, there may be cultural differences that alter the interpretation of school connectedness in school systems that differ from a typical American school setting. More specifically, young adults who have attended schools using a tracking model like many schools in Europe may report school connectedness constructs differently when compared to young adults who attended a comprehensive high school like the American high school model.

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