The main question that leads the focus in this study is: What is the contribution of the school environment to the resilience of middle-adolescent students? Before going into the background and rationale of this study I will specify the terms used in this research question: - Contribution: In this study I will use the dynamic term contribution instead of the term effect because I will not measure the causal influence in a statistical way but I will explore the relationship between school environment and middle-adolescents resilience in terms of dynamic, reciprocal interactions. - School environment: With the term school environment I refer to all possible aspects of the immediate environment constituted by the school as a system in which the middle-adolescent is interactively participating. These aspects can include teachers as well as the school building as well as the lunch breaks and extramural activities. No framed description of this term will be postulated beforehand because the school environment will be studied from the viewpoint of the middle-adolescents. It is the middle-adolescents description of the term school environment that is the focus of this study. - Resilience: Before constructing the term resilience in a detailed manner in Chapter Two I will use the term to denote the ability to bounce back after stressful experiences. - Middle-adolescent: a 14-or 15-year old girl or boy. I will elaborate on the reason for the focus on this age group in paragraph 2.1.
BackgroundThere has been an increasing interest in negative or ‘undermining’ motivations for reading. In this study, we aimed to strengthen knowledge on the validity of the distinction between affirming and undermining motivations. First, we examined whether the structure of a questionnaire based on this distinction could be confirmed. Second, we examined the predictive value of undermining motivations for reading comprehension. Third, we studied moderator effects of gender and age.MethodsWe administered a reading motivation questionnaire and a reading comprehension test to 324 low-achieving adolescents. The questionnaire included items on affirming and undermining motivations for school and leisure time reading: intrinsic motivation and avoidance, self-efficacy and perceived difficulty.ResultsConfirmatory factor analyses supported the assumed structure of the questionnaire. Undermining motivations, particularly perceived difficulty, explained unique variance in reading achievement. Gender and age did not moderate effects of motivational variables.ConclusionsEducators need to be aware of the role of undermining motivations. Future research should examine if interventions can lead to the reduction of such motivations.
In recent studies on the association between education and fertility, increased attention has been paid to the field of study. Women who studied in traditionally more “feminine” fields, like care, teaching, and health, were found to have their children earlier and to have more children than other women. A point of debate in this literature is on the causal direction of this relationship. Does the field of study change the attitudes towards family formation, or do young adults with stronger family-life attitudes self-select into educational fields that emphasize care, teaching, and health? Or do both field of study preferences and family-life attitudes arise before actual choices in these domains are made?We contribute to this debate by examining the relationship between fertility expectations and expected fields of study and occupation among 14-17 year-old adolescents. We use data collected in 2005 from 1500 Dutch adolescents and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) to examine the associations between expected field of study and occupation and fertility expectations. Our results show that expectations concerning fertility and field of study are already interrelated during secondary education. Both female and male adolescents who expect to pursue studies in fields that focus on care and social interaction (like health care, teaching etc.) are less likely to expect to remain childless. This holds equally for girls and boys. In addition, girls who more strongly aspire to an occupation in which communication skills are important also expect to have more children. We did not find any relationship between expectations of pursuing a communicative field of study and occupation and expectations of earlier parenthood.In addition, among boys, we find that the greater their expectation of opting for an economics, a technical, or a communicative field of study, the less likely they were to expect to remain childless. Boys who expected to study in the economic field also expect to have their first child earlier, but boys expecting to pursue a technical course of studies expect to enter parenthood later. We also found that those who expect to pursue cultural studies are more likely to have a preference for no children, or if they do want children, to have them later in life.Overall, our findings suggest that the processes of elective affinity between the communicative fields of study and work on the one hand and fertility on the other hand are more or less comparable for boys and girls. With respect to the other domains, we find, apart from the gender differences in the relation between fields of study and childlessness, hardly or no gender differences in the expected timing of parenthood and the number of children. The genders do differ in their level of preference for communicative and economics-related fields of study and occupation, but if they do have the same preference, the association with fertility expectations is more or less similar.
MULTIFILE
