Perceived school kindness and academic engagement: The mediational roles of achievement goal orientations

Abstract

Perceptions of kindness at school have been linked to a few positive psychological outcomes including optimism, happiness, life satisfaction, and social goals. However, limited evidence has been generated on how kindness relates to academic-related outcomes. This study explored the association of perceived school kindness with different domains of academic engagement. It also examined whether school kindness would have indirect effects on engagement outcomes via the intermediate variables – achievement goal orientations (i.e., mastery-approach, mastery-avoidance, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance goals). Results showed that school kindness was positively correlated to agentic, behavioral, cognitive, and emotional engagement. Bias-corrected bootstrapping analyses demonstrated that perceived school kindness had indirect effects on behavioral engagement and cognitive engagement via the intermediate variables, approach goals. While mastery-approach goals mediated the link between perceived school kindness and emotional engagement, performance-approach goals mediated the association of perceived school kindness with agentic engagement. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.