Positive attitudes towards school and learning proved to facilitate learning processes and contribute to students’ educational success (e.g, Archambault et al., 2009; Hadjar and Lupatsch, 2010). While many students like school at the beginning of their school careers, they later lose enjoyment of and interest in learning and develop negative attitudes towards school (e.g., Gottfried et al., 2001; Wigfield, Byrnes, & Eccles, 2006). These developments go along with a decreasing student participation in the classroom, an increase in deviant behaviours, decreasing achievement, more frequent failures, and even early school leaving (e.g., Archambault et al., 2009). Thus, what students think about school is of importance as it affects their own progress as well as schooling in general.

This symposium focuses on two major concepts aiming at capturing processes of increased distance towards schooling, and a decline in cognitive, emotional and motivational bonding to school that are reflected in an increase in negative attitudes towards school among students: school disengagement and school alienation. The disengagement concept (Fredricks et al., 2004) centres on three dimensions being strongly linked, namely emotional engagement (e.g., sense of belonging), cognitive engagement (e.g., learning motivation) and behavioural engagement (e.g., participation versus misconduct). The school alienation concept (Hascher & Hadjar, 2018) stresses the processual character and defines school alienation in terms of negative attitudes towards social and academic domains of schooling (such as learning, teachers and classmates) that include cognitive and affective elements, and that change over time in terms of a state and can solidify into a disposition. As school alienation only links to attitudes, the concept strongly distinguishes between psychological processes and enacted outcomes. Both concepts situate roots of their core phenomena in socialisation and developmental contexts such as family and peer groups on the one hand, and experiences in school (with school structures, teachers, classmates) on the other hand.

Main objectives of the symposium include a discussion of conceptual frameworks as well as of causes (such as teaching styles and learning environments) and consequences (such as low achievement and drop-out) on different levels (classroom, individual level). The four papers on school alienation and disengagement deal with complementary issues including conceptual considerations and empirical findings, employ different quantitative and qualitative methodologies and relate to four differential country settings (Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland).

Archambault, I., Janosz, M., Fallu, J. S., & Pagani, L. S. (2009b). Student engagement and its relationship with early high school dropout. Journal of Adolescence, 32(3), 651-670. Fredricks, J. A., Blumenfeld, P. C., and Paris, A. H. (2004). School engagement. Review of Educational Research, 74, 59-109. Gottfried, A. E., Fleming, J. S., & Gottfried, A. W. (2001). Continuity of academic intrinsic motivation from childhood through late adolescence. Journal of Educational Psychology, 93(1), 3-13. Hadjar, A., and Lupatsch, J. (2010). Der Schul(miss)erfolg der Jungen [The lower educational success of boys – The impact of social ressources, school alienation and gender role patterns]. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 62(4), 599-622. Hascher, T., & Hadjar, A. (2018). School alienation – Theoretical approaches and educational research. Educational Research, 60, 171-188. Wigfield, A., Byrnes, J. P. & Eccels, J. S. (2006). Development during early and middle adolescence. In P. A. Alexander & P. H. Winne (Eds.), The handbook of educational psychology (pp. 87-113). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.