Schools as Socialisation Contexts: Understanding the Impact of School Climate Factors on Students’ Sense of School Belonging

Education is a top priority of the European Union (EU). The EU Education Council has declared that to be the world leader in terms of the quality of education and training systems by 2010, fundamental transformations in education should be carried out in each country according to its national context and traditions. As a candidate country, Turkey shares this common objective. Yet, the mean school attainment and net education enrollment rates in Turkey are still behind the EU averages. The education literature indicates students’ sense of school belonging as an important predictor of school attainment. This study aims to identify the policy manipulable social aspects of schools that can be instrumental in increasing students’ sense of school belonging in a sample of 799 middle school students attending public schools in Istanbul, Turkey. The conceptual model posits that students’ satisfaction with both the social relationships in the school and the school environment has consequences for their sense of school belonging. The results of the structural equation model analysis revealed a plausible model. Satisfaction with social relationships emerged as a stronger predictor of sense of school belonging than satisfaction with the school environment. Further comparisons of the same conceptual model for schools with low and high socioeconomic conditions yielded different associations among the study variables. The findings are discussed in terms of their relevance to the education system in Turkey and other less affluent societies with similar social, cultural, and economic conditions. L’education est une priorite majeure de l’Union Europeenne (UE). Le Conseil de l’Education de l’UE a declare que pour devenir le leader mondial de la qualite de l’education et de la formation en 2010, il fallait operer des reformes d’importance dans le systeme d’education de chacun des pays dans le respect de leurs traditions et de leur contexte national. En tant que candidate pour integrer l’Union, la Turquie partage cet objectif commun. Pourtant, les performances scolaires moyennes et le taux de scolarisation sont en Turquie toujours en-dessous des moyennes europeennes. La litterature concernee montre que la conviction de l’eleve d’etre integrea l’ecole est un predicteur important de ses resultats scolaires. Cette etude cherche a definir les possibilites d’action politique sur les variables sociales scolaires susceptibles d’ameliorer le sentiment d’appartenance a l’ecole, cela sur un echantillon de 799 eleves de college frequentant des etablissements publics d’Istanbul. Le modele pose que la satisfaction des eleves relative aux relations sociales a l’ecole et a l’environnement scolaire est en relation avec leur sentiment d’integration a l’etablissement. Les resultats de l’analyse en modele d’equation structurale fournissent une structure plausible. La satisfaction liee aux relations sociales ressort comme un predicteur du sentiment d’appartenance plus puissant que la satisfaction relative a l’environnement scolaire. Des manipulations complementaires de ce meme modele a partir de conditions socio-economiques elevees ou basses deboucherent sur de nouvelles associations entre les differentes variables. Ces resultats sont evalues sur la base de leur pertinence pour le systeme scolaire turque et celui d’autres pays moins prosperes presentant des conditions economiques, sociales et culturelles analogues.