Original scientific paper
The relationship between classroom environment, self-efficacy, emotional competence and the school achievement of fifth and eighth-grade students
Morana Koludrović
orcid.org/0000-0003-4099-8330
; Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Split, Split, Croatia
Andrea Ratković
Nikolina Bajan
Abstract
In the student-centred curriculum approach, apart from changes in the didactic-methodical plan of structuring the teaching process, in the form of the application of didactic strategies aimed at solving problems, student activity and collaborative learning, increased emphasis is placed on the importance of the quality of classroom atmosphere as a social dimension that contributes both to student academic achievement and various self-constructs that can contribute, on the personal, social and academic level, to student wellbeing. Therefore, the main objective of this research was to examine the relationship between understanding the quality of the classroom atmosphere, self-efficacy, emotional competence and the academic success of fifth and eighth-grade students in elementary school, and to determine the contribution of these constructs in explaining student academic achievement in terms of total academic achievement and achievement in mathematics and Croatian language and literature. In order to verify all the above mentioned, several scales were used for testing each variable in the research which included 359 fifth and eighth-grade students in elementary school. The results show better academic achievement, achievement in mathematics and the mother tongue, as well as greater self-efficacy and better assessment of emotional competence of fifth-grade students, wherein, regarding all the variables, female students achieve significantly better results than male students. The results of the research of the quality assessment of classroom atmosphere, concerning quality assessment of relations between students, quality assessment of teacher-student interaction, and sensitivity in reporting violence in the school environment, are in favour of younger students, and there were no significant differences between male and female research participants. Furthermore, it was found that, as in a lot of previous research related to the explanation of student academic achievement, student self-efficacy was the most important predictor, while correlation calculation showed that all the elements of classroom atmosphere are highly associated with self-efficacy and the emotional competence of students.
Keywords
school achievement; emotional competence, self-efficacy; classroom environment, elementary school
Hrčak ID:
154605
URI
Publication date:
15.3.2016.
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