Student alienation and commitment to school : a multivariate analysis of the effects of home and school environments

Abstract

This study investigates secondary school students' attitudes to school in relation to the type of school they attend and their home background. In recent years a number of new open space secondary schools have been built in Australia and, in addition, many long-established schools have introduced an open approach to teaching and learning as a form of innovation. It has been suggested that students in open schools are more likely to have a positive attitude to school than students in traditional schools. TO test the validity of this suggestion the present study examines the prevalence of alienation and its opposite - commitment to school - among students from a variety of home backgrounds in different types of secondary schools. Student alienation is defined in terms of seven dimensions: Misfeasance, Self-estrangement, Value Isolation, Social Powerlessness, . Meaninglessness, Social Isolation and Task Powerlessness. It is investigated in a theoretical framework which incorporates the interactions between the students and their home and school environments. The educational environment of the home is defined in terms of four domains: Stimulus, Parental Attitude, Parental Support and Parental Contact. Four types of school: Open, Innovative, Conventional and Traditional are identified on the basis of certain organizational aspects and teaching practices fostered in the schools. In April, 1975 data were collected from a random sample of students who were completing their final year of compulsory schooling i n three Australian States: South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria. In each State approximately 30 students from each of four large metropolitan co-educational secondary schools together with their parents and teachers took part in' the study. Data they provided were used to refine the measuring instruments and to define subscale scores and indices for use in subsequent analyses. Both univariate and multivariate statistical methods were used to test a number of propositions deduced from a theoretical model of the alienation process. The major findings of this study are: 1. The Student Alienation Scale is composed of seven factors which may be identified as the seven dimensions of alienation. Furthermore, these seven factors are components of an integrating factor of alienation. 2. Variations in the home backgrounds of students are discernible in terms of the educational environment of the home, that is, in terms of the parents' attitudes to education, the extent to which the parents support the work of the school, the amount of contact parents have with the school and the availability in the home of resource material of an educational nature. 3. By considering the organizational policies and practices adopted at the school level and the nature of the interactions between the teachers and the students at the classroom level,school environments can be classified as open, innovative, conventional or traditional . 4. The type of school has little effect on student alienation. S. The home and school environments have substantial independent effects on student alienation and commitment to school. The students' perceptions of the home environment are linked with six varieties of alienation but not with social powerlessness. Social powerlessness is related to the students' perceptions of the school environment. 6. Parents generally support the way learning situations are organized to provide for the needs of individual students in the open secondary school. However they tend to be dissatisfied with academic aspects of the school. Parents of children in traditional secondary schools are generally satisfied with the academic side of the school but not with the organization of classes.