Education Commons^™

Examining The Development And Classroom Dynamics Of Student Disaffection Over Multiple Time Periods: Short-Term Episodes And Long-Term Trajectories, Emily Anne Saxton

Dissertations and Theses

Student disaffection, a pervasive problem in middle school classrooms, is costly not only for disaffected students themselves (e.g., declines in GPA, high school drop out) but also for their teachers (e.g., stress-related health outcomes). Despite its importance, however, open questions remain regarding both the development of disaffection during early adolescence and the classroom dynamics that underlie changes in disaffection. This dissertation includes two free-standing manuscripts that explore these open questions regarding the development and classroom dynamics of disaffection. Each focuses on different developmental time scales and employs different methodological approaches to examine these important, but unanswered questions.

Drawing from a …

The Role Of Teacher Autonomy Support Across The Transition To Middle School: Its Components, Reach, And Developmental Effects, Julia Sara Dancis

Dissertations and Theses

Building upon self-determination theory, this study sought to ascertain the reach of teacher autonomy support beyond its well-documented impact on student autonomy and engagement to include student competence and relatedness, as well as to parse apart specific teacher behaviors that comprise autonomy support (i.e., respect, choice, relevance, coercion) and their unique influences on the multiple motivational outcomes, surrounding the transition to middle school. These questions were examined using information from 224 fifth graders, 339 sixth graders, and 345 seventh graders attending elementary and middle schools in a predominantly Caucasian working and middle class school district.

Regression analyses, predicting change in …

Capturing Peers', Teachers', And Parents' Joint Contributions To Students' Engagement: An Exploration Of Models, Justin William Vollet

Dissertations and Theses

Building on research that has focused on understanding how peers contribute to students' engagement, this dissertation explores the extent to which peer group influences on students' engagement may add to and be contextualized by qualities of the relationships they maintain with their teachers and their parents. To focus on how each of these adult contexts work in concert with peer groups to jointly contribute to changes in students' engagement, the two studies used data on 366 sixth graders which were collected at two time points during their first year of middle school: Peer groups were identified using socio-cognitive mapping; students …