Citation

Hughes JN, Im MH, Allee PJ. J. Sch. Psychol. 2015; 53(6): 493-507.

Affiliation

Texas A&M University, United States.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, Society for the Study of School Psychology, Publisher Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.jsp.2015.08.001

PMID

26563601

PMCID

PMC4644492

Abstract

This study investigated the association between trajectories of school belonging across grades 6-8 and academic achievement in grade 8 in an ethnically diverse sample of 527 academically at-risk adolescents. Students reported annually on school belonging. Reading and math achievement were assessed at grade 5 (baseline) and grade 8. Interactive effects of gender and ethnicity were found in the conditional growth models for school belonging. Girls of all ethnicities had identical growth trajectories and reported higher initial school belonging than Euro-American or Latino boys. Latino and Euro-American males had lower initial level of school belonging than African American males, and Latino males had lower growth in school belonging than Euro-American males. In structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses, initial level of school belonging predicted grade 8 reading for girls and grade 8 math for boys and girls, above prior achievement and school and child covariates, but growth in school belonging predicted grade 8 achievement only for African American students. Implications for strategies to improve school belonging among academically at-risk youth are discussed.

Language: en