Too High? Teacher Expectations and their (Curvi)linear Associations with Students’ School Engagement, Academic Achievement, and School Performance Pressure

Goal setting is one of the most important principal initiated strategies that facilitate students’ academic achievement in schools. This is because it energizes the students’ participation in academic programs and as a result enhances their academic achievement. World over, research has shown that motivation of the students enhance their academic achievement. In Mbita Sub-County, despite the existence of motivation strategies put in place by principals, the Sub-County was still performing poorly as was revealed by the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination results of 2018, 2019 and 2020. The Sub-County was ranked last in KCSE Examinations compared to the five other neighbouring sub- counties in Homa Bay County. Mbita Sub-County was ranked position five with an average mean score of 4.886 compared to Rangwe which was position one with a mean score of 5.354, Rachuonyo South was second with a mean score of 5.022, Rachuonyo East was third with a mean score of 4.988 while Homa Bay town was fourth with a mean score of 4.958. The objective of this study was to establish the influence of Principal-initiated Goal Setting on students’ academic achievement in public secondary schools. The study established that Principal-initiated goal setting strategy significantly influenced students’ academic achievement in public secondary schools by promoting independent learning among students. The findings are beneficial to policy makers and education administrators in formulating policies that can be used to improve students’ achievement in KCSE as well as improve practices in the initiation of motivational strategies in schools.

The use of motivational speakers strategy in enhancing students’ academic achievement in schools in Kenya was adopted by many school administrators in the late 1980s after the introduction of private / holiday tuition in the late 1970s. By 2010, many charismatic professional motivational speakers were commonplace in schools on invitation. Currently many schools are utilising services of motivational speakers. This is based on the premise that worldover research has shown that motivation of the students enhance their academic achievement. There was therefore need to conduct a rigorous study to establish the actual position of this strategy in the 21st Century. Mbita Sub County was selected as the site for the study. This is because despite the existence of principal-initiated motivational strategy put in place by principals, the Sub-County still performs least with results showing that between 2018 and 2020, the Sub-County was ranked last in Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations compared to the five other neighbouring sub- counties in Homa Bay County. Mbita Sub-County was ranked position five with an average mean score of 4.886 compared to Rangwe which was position one with a mean score of 5.354, Rachuonyo South was second with a mean score of 5.022, Rachuonyo East was third with a mean score of 4.988 while Homa Bay town was fourth with a mean score of 4.958. The objective of the study was to establish the influence of Principal-initiated motivational speakers strategy on students’ academic achievement in public secondary schools in Mbita Sub-County, Kenya. The study established that Principal-initiated motivational speakers strategy significantly influenced students’ academic achievement in public secondary schools by enhancing frequent consultation with teachers. The study recommends that Principals should advise motivational speakers on the specific aspects to address as they talk to students targeting the aspect of optimum use of study time, discipline, examination answering skills, change of attitude about difficult subjects and other aspects that lead to students’ academic achievement. The findings are beneficial to policy makers and education administrators in improving students’ achievement.

This review has demonstrated the infancy of quality research on the effectiveness of education support interventions for children and adolescents with chronic health conditions. At best, we can say that we are uncertain whether education support interventions improve either academic achievement or school engagement. Of the secondary outcomes, we are also uncertain whether education support interventions improve transition back to school, or school re-entry. However, we suggest there is some evidence that education support may slightly improve mental health, measured as self-esteem. Given the current state of the evidence of the effectiveness of education support interventions for children and adolescents with chronic health conditions, we highlight some important implications for future research in this field to strengthen the evidence that can inform effective practice and policy.

School engagement is an important theoretical and practical cornerstone to the promotion of academic accomplishments. This article used a tripartite-behavioral, emotional, and cognitive-model of school engagement to assess the relationship between school engagement and academic success among high school students, and to determine whether a reciprocal relationship exists between these constructs. Data were derived from 710 youth (69% female) who took part in Waves 6 through 8 (Grades 10 through 12) of the 4-H study of positive youth development. Longitudinal confirmatory factor analyses confirmed the invariance of the tripartite model of school engagement. Results of a structural equation model showed that the components of school engagement and academic achievement were mutually predictive and that these predictions varied from grade to grade. Future possibilities for evaluating the relationship between school engagement and academic achievement, as well as the implications for educational policy and practice, are discussed.

The seminal work in the teacher expectation field was conducted by Rosenthal and Jacobson. In a classic study, Pygmalion, Rosenthal and Jacobson showed that by experimentally inducing false expectations in teachers, students made intellectual gains. The initial work was accepted that for teacher expectations to have an effect on students, teachers must interact differently with students for whom they had high expectations compared with how they interacted with students for whom they had low expectations. Weinstein has also examined teacher difference as moderating expectation effects. All the organizational and instructional decisions by high expectation teachers meant that students were motivated and engaged. The teacher expectation project seems that the beliefs and practices of high expectation teachers could be taught to other teachers such that all teachers could become high expectation teachers leading to accelerated achievement for their students and positive self-beliefs.

This short-term longitudinal research examined the relationships among middle school students’ perceptions of school environment, school engagement, and academic achievement. Participants were from a representative, ethnically diverse, urban sample of 1,046 students. The findings supported the theoretical conceptualization of three different, but related, dimensions of school engagement: school participation, sense of identification with school, and use of self-regulation strategies. The results also indicated that students’ perceptions of the distinct dimensions of school environment in seventh grade contribute differentially to the three types of school engagement in eighth grade. Finally, the authors found that students’ perceptions of school environment influenced their academic achievement directly and indirectly through the three types of school engagement. Specifically, students’ perceptions of school characteristics in seventh grade influenced their school participation, identification with school, and use of self-regulation strategies in eighth grade that occur therein and, in turn, influenced students’ academic achievement in eighth grade.

The editors of the Journal of Youth and Adolescence are delighted to announce the 2015 recipient of its Emerging Scholar Best Article Award. The Journal presents the award to the article’s lead author, who must be an ‘‘emerging scholar’’ (i.e., an untenured researcher, such as a graduate student, post-doctoral scholar, research scientist, or assistant professor). The recipient of the award is selected by a random group of editorial board members who evaluate manuscripts’ innovative and substantive contributions to the empirical understanding of adolescence. In addition to receiving the recognition from colleagues, the winner receives a financial award generously provided by Springer, the journal’s publisher. The 2015 winner is Paul A. Chase, for his article entitled ‘‘Academic achievement in the high school years: The changing role of school engagement’’, which was co-authored with Lacey J. Hilliard, G. John Geldhof, Daniel J. A. Warren, and Richard M. Lerner (Chase et al. 2014). His study developed a tripartite—behavioral, emotional, and cognitive—model of school engagement to assess the relationship between school engagement and academic success among high school students. His analyses used data from the 4-H study of positive youth development, which in this instance followed 710 youth (69 % female) from Grades 10 to 12. The results revealed that the components of school engagement and academic achievement were mutually predictive and that these predictions varied from grade to grade. Overall, behavioral engagement emerged as the strongest predictor of achievement, leading the authors to conclude that ‘‘the best approach for capitalizing on the reciprocal relations between school engagement and academic achievement’’ may be ‘‘initiatives that promote intrinsic motives for behavioral engagement, coupled perhaps, at least initially, with extrinsic incentives for such engagement’’ (Chase et al. 2014, p. 894). Given that the journal publishes 12 issues per year, each typically containing up to 15 manuscripts, the editors view the award as a considerably distinctive accomplishment. Each of the issues has multiple articles authored by emerging scholars. The selection of articles for the award involves a two-step process, with the first round involving the selection of the strongest articles from each issue and the second round involving another group of editors who rank the selected articles. As in prior years (see Levesque 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014), the process resulted in a pool of very impressive articles. Unlike prior years, the initial round resulted in having one of the journal issues creating a tie between two authors, Madan et al. (2014) and Young (2014). A look at their work reveals why the selection committee was impressed. The articles selected as potential winners addressed a variety of important topics that reflect the journal’s commitment to better understanding adolescent development from contextual perspectives. Some of the articles focused on a variety of influences on developmental outcomes, such as ethnicity/race (Killoren and Deutsch 2014; Williams et al. 2014; Moilanen et al. 2014), genetics (Newsome and Sullivan 2014), media (Scull et al. 2014; Madan et al. 2014) and social networks, particularly peers (Sentse et al. 2014; Caravita et al. 2014; Garnett et al. 2014). In doing so, the studies focused on a variety of outcomes, including academic success (Godfrey and Grayman 2014; Chase et al. 2014) and a variety of risk behavior, including selfharm (Hamza and Willoughby 2014) as well as violence, delinquency and substance use (Sentse et al. 2014; Garnett & Roger J. R. Levesque rlevesqu@indiana.edu

This study looks into the elements that contribute to the poverty trap and how it affects learner academic progress in selected Nongoma secondary schools in South Africa's Zululand district. A mixed qualitative and quantitative data gathering strategy was utilized to collect the information. Purposeful sampling was employed to pick five secondary high schools in this area, as well as teachers and students who were conveniently selected for the study. Financial resources, a lack of aspiration and motivation, and school dropouts are all results of poverty traps, according to the research, and these factors impede learners' academic achievement in the schools studied. According to the study, reducing or eliminating poverty requires collective efforts, and all educational actors should contribute their respective quotas to provide basic infrastructure to both schools and rural communities, redistribute income and wealth, and plan improvements to encourage students to see the world from various perspectives.
 
 Received: 19 July 2021 / Accepted: 14 March 2022 / Published: 5 May 2022

School engagement is integral to the promotion of academic success. To explore the relations between school engagement and school success, we review findings from the 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development and other related research in order to describe how cognitive, emotional, and behavioral school engagement relate to academic success and thriving among youth. Based on the research we review, we make recommendations for in-school and out-of-school programs and for policies supporting such programs, which involve assessing school engagement across all school years, supporting peer mentoring and modeling programs, enhancing the integration of in-school school-engagement promotion with out-of-school-time youth development programs, and rigorously evaluating school-engagement enhancement initiatives. If proven effective through such evaluations, the programs and policies we recommend can lead to more actively engaged students. The actions can result, then, in the development of youth who invest their time and energy to achieve positive and valued academic and life goals.

Ethnic-racial socialization is one strategy Black parents use to support their children’s school engagement and academic achievement given the occurrence and toxic effects of discrimination. Egalitarianism and preparation for bias socialization messages have yielded mixed evidence of promotive and protective effects for Black youth's school outcomes, and effects may vary according to ethnicity. Thus, this research examined associations between ethnic-racial socialization messages and school engagement and achievement, and whether these messages protected against teacher discrimination effects on academic achievement transmitted through school engagement, among a nationally representative sample of Black adolescents who participated in the National Survey of American Life Adolescent supplement study. Ethnic-racial socialization message content and the frequency of communication about race demonstrated different associations with engagement (i.e., school bonding, aspiration-expectation discrepancy, and disciplinary actions) and achievement (i.e., grades) for African American and Caribbean Black youth. However, the benefits were not sufficient to combat the adverse effects of teacher discrimination on school engagement and, in turn, achievement. These findings highlight the utility of integrating ethnic-racial socialization into prevention programs to support Black youth’s school experiences; demonstrate the importance of attention to heterogeneity within Black youth; and underscore the critical need for prevention programs to address teacher discrimination.

This study examined the relationships between community violence exposure and two related, but meaningfully distinct, academic outcomes: school engagement and academic achievement (GPA). Psychological symptoms were investigated as mediators of these relationships. One hundred eighteen youth reported on community violence exposure and school engagement twice during adolescence, and both parents and adolescents reported on psychological symptoms. Cumulative GPA was also acquired from participants. A path model and hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used to assess these relationships longitudinally. Earlier community violence exposure inversely predicted later school engagement, but earlier school engagement did not predict later community violence exposure. School engagement mediated the association between community violence exposure and school GPA. Internalizing and externalizing symptoms, but not posttraumatic stress symptoms, mediated the association between community violence and school engagement. When adolescents are exposed to community violence, they may become vulnerable to a cascade of events including psychological symptoms and decreased connectedness to school, which ultimately can lead to overall poor academic achievement. The more proximal, changeable experiences of school connectedness and psychological symptoms offer targets for interventions offsetting long-term adverse academic consequences in violence-exposed youth.

The role of the school climate in buffering disengagement remains relatively underresearched. The present study examined transitions between classes of early adolescents’ school engagement and relational school climate factors influencing classes of students’ (dis-)engagement, and how these were linked with academic achievement in mid-adolescence. A representative sample of 3,643 early adolescents (48.72% females) from the Growing Up in Australia cohort study was utilised. Latent transition analyses indicated three classes of school engagement, namely mostly disengaged, moderately engaged and highly engaged. Significant transitions were found between classes with fewer students becoming moderately engaged and mostly disengaged. Having a positive teacher–student relationship and higher feelings of school belonging predicted membership to the highly engaged classes. Highly engaged students were fewer by age 12 but had the best achievement only in numeracy, writing and spelling tests at age 14/15. The study underscores the importance of positive relational school climate for fostering school engagement and achievement.

Education is viewed as a tool for change. Globally, efforts are geared toward enhancing the educational process of studentsf academic achievement in secondary schools. However, there are differences in studentsf attributes, and the desire for parents to provide better educational opportunities to their children. This study randomly sampled 300 respondents in Katsina State. The data for the study were collected using a structured questionnaire to achieve the purpose of the study and were analyzed using descriptive statistics, ANOVA and t-test. A positive and significant association was observed between age and respondentsf academic achievement (0.382, P.0.36). Overall, majority of the respondents perceived their families as having high academic aspirations for them. It is recommended that parents should be educated about good parental roles that enhance their childrenfs motivation for improving their academic achievement in schools.

IntroductionSocio-emotional security and particularly secure attachment relationships with parents and peers have been associated with positive developmental outcomes, including school-related variables. This systematic literature review aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the literature, exploring the relationship between socio-emotional security (attachment, support, and secure relations with parents and peers) and academic achievement, school engagement, and early school dropout.MethodsThe inclusion criteria were studies with socio-emotional security as the independent variable and academic achievement and/or school engagement as the dependent variable, using a quantitative methodology, written in English. The exclusion criteria were articles presenting literature review or meta-analysis, interventions or instrument validation studies, studies with a qualitative approach, studies developed in an e-learning context, studies with university students, and/or focused on schooling in extreme conditions (e.g., COVID-19). PRISMA guidelines were followed, through a search that resulted in the identification of 38 empirical quantitative studies, published between 2018 and 2022, in English.Results and discussionThe results revealed that parent and peer relationships impact students’ academic achievement and school engagement, as expected, and highlighted the relevance of parental and peer relationships for school-related outcomes. Future research should consider the role of potential mediators and moderators in the relationship between socio-emotional security and school outcomes.

Background: The Learning style has been the focus of numerous studies, but it remains complex and affected by many factors. Nursing students should learn large quantities of theoretical content in a short period of time. Objective: The Relationship between Learning style and undergraduate nursing students’ Academic Achievement in School of nursing and midwifery, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran Methods: A correlational cross sectional study was conducted. The subjects of this study were Undergraduate nursing students 232 from school grades of years attending to school of nursing and midwifery of Tehran University of Medical Sciences. Data was collected from students through an anonymous learning style questionnaire. The questionnaire was divided into three sections including (a) demographic profile (b) Kolb’s Learning Style Inventory (c) Academic achievement. An initial version of the questionnaire was piloted on a small group of nursing students as the context was validated by a panel of expertise in nursing education. All ethical considerations were applied in this study. Data analysis was carried out by using the latest version of the statistical software package SPSS (Version-21). Descriptive and analytical statistical test were used to analyze the data. Results: A total of 232 participated in study of relationship between learning styles, and undergraduate nursing students’ academic achievement. One hundred –Forty three participants were female (61.6%), and 89 respondents were male (38.4%); 60.8% were between 20 and 25 years, 33.6% were <20 years, and 5.6% were >25 years old. The most frequency learning style of students was Abstract Conceptualization (37.5%). In addition, Active Experiential (30.17%), Reflective Observation (19.83%) and Concrete Experiencing (12.5%) were in the next order in LS of students. The majority of subjects (52.8%) their academic achievements were at level of Good (the Median score were between (13-16). There was no significant relationship between Learning style and Academic Achievement (P> 0.05). There was a relationship between Learning styles and gender (P<0.05). There was a relationship between learning style and academic level (P=0.041). Conclusion: Not all students are self-directed, and this study suggests that mature students are more self-directed than that entering nurse education direct from high school. Nurses’ educators need to assess the Learning style and preferences of their students in order to determine the appropriateness of Self-Directed in learning.