School belonging: validation of a theoretical model high school students’ engagement and academic achievement in mathematics
In recent years, a number of theorists have examined students’ sense of belonging in school contexts, in order to better understand the ways they can be connected to academic achievement. To more thoroughly investigate these psychological processes, we applied the Anderman and Freeman model (2004) to validate four hypotheses. The sample consists of 2749 high school students living in Quebec. Our results corroborate several elements of this model: first, our results support the idea that school belonging is the basis for academic engagement and achievement; second, our findings reinforce the important role of positive emotions for student engagement.