Examining the relationship between student attributional style, perceived teacher fairness, and sense of school belonging

Abstract

Teacher fairness is a major concern for secondary students and significantly influences their sense of school belonging. This study investigated the relationship between Australian secondary students’ perception of teacher fairness and school belonging, and the indirect effects of student attributional style on that relationship. A sample of 269 students was collected from online surveys, which used the Psychological Sense of School Membership, Teacher Justice Scale, and Adolescent Cognitive Style Questionnaire to measure the key variables. Correlational analysis (two-tailed) revealed a positive relationship between perceived teacher fairness and school belonging, r (269) = 0.47, p <.001, and a negative relationship between maladaptive student attributional style with perceived teacher fairness, r (269) = -0.18, p <.001, and school belonging, r (269) = -0.28, p <.001. Additionally, a multiple regression analysis found that the variability in both student attributional style and perceived teacher fairness jointly explained around 26% of the variability in school belonging. Moreover, student attributional style partly mediated the relationship between perceived teacher fairness and school belonging, with an estimated statistically significant indirect effect of 0.03 units and a dominant direct effect of 0.31 units. These results confirm perceived teacher fairness as an essential ingredient for a positive teacher-student relationship and sense of school belonging. Findings from this study provide implications for classroom justice research and highlight the potential for applying framing interventions to students’ perceptions of teacher fairness to improve teacher-student relationships and enhance students’ sense of school belonging.