Effects of Education and Attitude on Essential Learning Outcomes

Abstract

Encouraging and supporting essential learning outcomes, a foundation for further developing the skills, competencies, and dispositions in youth, required approaches that addressed the several of factors. What factors and mechanisms had contributed to essential learning outcomes for each student groups who had different backgrounds? This study examined the effectiveness of the secondary education, attitude toward life, effect to essential learning outcomes among a sample of U.S. youth who grow up in urban as compared to non-urban groups. Data came from Monitoring the Future, nationally representative survey of 12th grade student in the 2013. We used mediation analysis to test whether the effect of the secondary education on essential learning outcomes mediated by the attitude toward life of students and perform measurement invariance across different groups. The results empirically supported that education effected on both attitude toward life and essential learning outcomes, relationship between attitude toward life and essential learning outcomes, the effects of education on essential learning outcomes were partial mediated by the attitude toward life of students, and configural invariance between groups. In order to achieve the essential learning outcome, there were different aspects or factors needed for different group of students. For urban students, the education was the most important. But for non-urban students, the attitude played more a crucial role.