Session Information
11 ONLINE 53 A, Creating learning community
Paper Session
MeetingID: 992 8767 7736 Code: xe1SWF
Contribution
Unexpected crises have adverse and long-lasting effects on students’ learning and wellbeing,
especially among those who are either at risk or systematically disadvantaged (Lewis et al.,
2020). The COVID-19 pandemic and schooling research have shown that the effect of pandemic-
time on students’ learning, motivation and wellbeing has been diverse but mostly negative
(Branje & Morris, 2021; Lewis et al., 2021; Salmela-Aro et al., 2021). First descriptive results of our
large-scale COVID-19 data set show that Finnish schools are gradually adjusting to changing
demands e.g., in terms of pedagogical practices (Ahtiainen et al., 2021). However, earlier studies
on long-term students’ learning and wellbeing are still scarce. Similarly, it is not known which characteristics
of school community, implementation of teaching or interactions between teachers in schools have
enhanced student learning and the well-being.
We expect that adaptive school communities (ASC) are able to recover from crises, adapt to unforeseen changes, maintain high professional efficacy, renew and redirect themselves proactively when needed, resulting in the capacity to promote positive educational trajectories among youth, including those at risk, even against all odds (Bandura, 1998, Hatch, 2021). Adaptability involves
individual and system-wide responses to change, novelty and uncertainty. In the ASC, education
and mental health integration is at the centre when the goal of an adaptive school community
includes effective schooling and the goal of effective schools in turn includes well-being of
school personnel and students. We expect that high adaptability can
be detected as shared expectations, commitment and collective efficacy (Heikonen
et al., submitted) which in turn emerges for the students as systematic and supportative teacher behavior. Within the ASC, we study here the school community comprising teachers and students. The central
component of ASC is self-efficacy, which is the belief in one’s ability to act to produce desired
results, and collective efficacy forms from the shared belief that actions by a group will
influence the shared future they seek (Bandura, 1998; Goddard et al., 2015). Adaptive teachers in turn report a greater organisational commitment which is linked to students’ positive well-being and academic outcomes (Collie & Martin, 2017). Growing evidence suggests that collective efficacy improves educational and health outcomes for both teachers themselves (Butel & Braun, 2019; Lim & Eo, 2014; Capone, Joshanloo & Sang-Ah Park, 2019) and students (Goddard et al., 2017; Moolenaar et al., 2012). Strong collective teacher efficacy improve and stablise learning results caused by students’ demographic features such as sociodemographic background (Goddard et al., 2017).
Recent findings indicate that during the pandemic, student learning and wellbeing was not supported enough (Oinas et al., under review). Perceived support from teachers is known to be associated both with academic performance and social-emotional wellbeing of students (Tennant et al., 2015). Students who reported receiving emotional, instrumental, informational and/or appraisal support had higher academic achievements and fewer problems at school. Based on meta-analysis, Rueger and colleagues (2016) suggest that it is important for teachers to provide both direct and indirect support for students in order to prevent stress in their students.
Both in educational and health research and policies, inequalities are a major concern. However, the mechanisms explaining the relationship between school attainment, learning and well-being are still poorly understood; we expect to achieve a new level of understanding of how educational inequalities can be prevented by using the adaptive school community model as our framework and a basis for recommendations for future policies and practice.
Our main objective is to identify characteristics of the school and school community, especially here teachers’ collective beliefs, which produce successful school community adaptation, decrease inequalities, and promote students’ learning and health, and wellbeing in unexpected changes of circumstances.
Method
Our comprehensive large-scale survey data set combines responses from the entire Finnish school community (principals, teachers, students, school welfare personnel, guardians) about their COVID-19 pandemic related perceptions on schooling in spring 2021. In this study, we use only selected answers from the low-secondary education teachers and students (from 7th to 9th grade). Teachers’ answers were mapped with the measure of collective teacher efficacy (12 questions) and with the measure of teachers' community work practices (5 questions). The questions cater the skills related to the teacher's role, while taking into account the efficacy beliefs of the entire teaching community to organize teaching and schooling according to educational goals. To study students’ perceived support from the teachers, we used Malecki’s and Demaray’s (2002) questionnaire representing four different areas: emotional, instrumental, and cognitive support and positive feedback (Malecki & Demaray, 2002). In addition, we asked from the students’ perceived educational progress in schools, school performance and pupil satisfaction and well-being during COVID-19 pandemic. From the teacher data, we formed school-specific average sum variables in terms of teacher cooperation and community capacity to find indicators for school level teacher efficacy. The cluster analysis yielded two different school clusters, which were combined with the student body representing those schools (N = 7394). We named the groupings as Active school community (16 schools, 3,527 students) and Passive school community schools (13 schools, 3,867 students). This was executed to study if there are associations between the school communities and students’ perceived support.
Expected Outcomes
Tentative multivariate analysis results showed that in the Active school community schools, the perceived support received from teachers was higher in all four support areas than in the Passive school community schools. The support experienced by students, in turn, was statistically significantly positively related to students' experiences of their study progress, school satisfaction and well-being, and these relationships remained statistically significant even when student' school success was used as a control variable in the analyzes. Our results provide new insights into the importance of school-level collective efficacy and collaboration between the teachers for students' perceived support and wellbeing. It is important for school personnel to discuss about common educational and more specific learning goals and how systematically take these goals into account when supporting students to work towards these goals.
References
Ahtiainen et al., (2021). COVID-19e ects of the exceptional circumstances on schooling, teaching and well-being. The results of the 3rd national survey. Press release. Bandura, A. (1998). Personal and collective e icacy in human adaptation and change. In J. G. Adair, D. Bélanger, & K. L. Dion (Eds.), Advances in psychological science, Vol. 1. Social, personal, and cultural aspects (pp. 51–71). Psychology Press/Erlbaum (UK) Taylor & Francis. Goddard, R., Goddard, Y., Sook Kim, E., & Miller, R. (2015). A theoretical and empirical analysis of the roles of instructional leadership, teacher collaboration, and collective efficacy beliefs in support of student learning. American journal of education, 121(4), 501-530. Heikonen, L., Ahtiainen, R., Oinas, S., Koivuhovi, S., Rimpelä, A. & Hotulainen, R. (submitted). Associations between collective teacher e icacy, teachers’ work related wellbeing and feeling of preparedness for future school closures during Covid-19 pandemic. Honingh, M., & Hooge, E. (2014). The effect of school-leader support and participation in decision making on teacher collaboration in Dutch primary and secondary schools. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 42(1), 75-98. Lauerman, F., & ten Hagen, I. (2021). Do teachers’ perceived teaching competence and self-efficacy affect students’ academic outcomes? A closer look at student-reported classroom processes and outcomes. Educational Psychologist, 56, 4, 265–282. Doi: 10.1080/00461520.2021.1991355. Malecki, C.K., & Demaray, M.K. (2002). Measuring perceived social support: development of the child and adolescents social support scale (CASSS). Psychology in the School, 39, 1, 1–19. Oinas, S. E., Thuneberg, H., Vainikainen, M-P., & Hotulainen, R. (2020). Technology-enhanced feedback profiles and their associations with learning and academic well-being indicators in basic education. Contemporary Educational Technology, 12(2). Rimpelä, A., Lindfors, P., Kinnunen, JM., Myöhänen, A., Hotulainen, R., Koivuhovi, S., Vainikainen,M-P. (submitted). Does the way of distance teaching matter? Adolescent students’ health and loneliness during the school closure in Finland. IJERPH 2021. Rueger, S.Y., Malecki, C., Pyun, Y., & Aycoc, C. (2016). A meta-analytic review of the association between perceived social support and depression in childhood and adolescence. Psy Bulletin. Salmela-Aro, K., Upadyaya, K., Vinni-Laakso, J., Hietajärvi, L. (2021) Adolescents’ longitudinal school engagement and burnout before and during CODIV-19. The role of socio-economic skills. J Research on Adolescence, 33(3).
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