Individual religiosity or effect of denominational schools? Analysis of the impact of religiosity and denominational schools on the results of 8th grade students in Bihor County, Romania

Abstract

Research in recent decades examining the correlates of educational outcomes highlights the role of religiosity in students' academic progress and achievements. An increasing number of recent studies in the field of education confirm this hypothesis, the one of the positive influences of religiosity on behavior and attitudes with a positive effect on the achievement of educational goals and academic results. As such, denominational schools are also under the attention of many researchers who observe differences between these religious schools and other, non-religiously affiliated schools. The sociological literature even speaks of a „religious school effect”, inspired by the original idea of the „Catholic school effect”, stressing that beyond the impact of individual religiosity on school outcomes, mediated mainly by attitudinal and psychosociological effects, there are also moderators at the institutional level resulting from the specificity of denominational schools. In the present study we test these two hypotheses simultaneously by modeling the learning averages of a large sample of 8th graders in Bihor County, Romania, using simple linear regression. Our results confirm what we have already found in previous studies, namely that personal religiosity has a positive effect on learning outcomes, while a separate effect at the institutional level cannot be shown.