High school teachers often struggle to engage students who have little or no motivation to learn. We argue that improving students' perceptions of affective relationships with teachers may have the potential to positively influence their motivation, and vice versa. This study looks at reciprocal associations between students' perceptions of the…

Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) clubs promote safer school environments for students. GSAs typically refer to student-led, teacher-supported school clubs that serve youth of diverse gender identities and sexual orientations. This study investigated the relationship between students' awareness of school-based GSAs and their bullying experiences, mental…

This study explored racialized newcomer student participants' experiences in a rural high school in Western Canada, and utilized critically engaged language and literacy workshops (CELLWs) as a means to authentically represent participants' interrelationships with and relatability to their school and community spaces. CELLWs are an important…

This study investigates the effects of an alternative approach to grade retention, known as a "remediation measure." This measure was tested in 2010-2011 in two high schools in Quebec (Canada) and its effects on students' achievement motivation were analyzed. Specifically, the evolution of general and domain-specific expectancy and value…

The study of learning environments involves describing educational contexts and identifying empirical relationships among subject matter (curriculum), teaching practices and other environmental variables. In recent years, this has become a growing field of academic inquiry within elementary, secondary and post-secondary research. Investigations of…

The purpose of this study was to gain insight from parents and guardians about their experiences of involvement in the education of their high school aged children. Data were gathered using interviews for nine randomly selected participants from an urban high school in Alberta, Canada. Thematic analysis identified the types of activities parents…

Purpose: There is a need for research that examines how digital networks can support all learners in open access to people, resources and experiences that were previously inaccessible in K-12 learning contexts. This study aims to examine the potential of open education theories and open practices in high school learning environments.…

The aim of the present study was to investigate how bullying incident participant roles and moral reasoning relate to each other in adolescents. To do so, we examined sociomoral judgments about hypothetical bullying incidents and moral disengagement in adolescents identified as bullies, defenders of the victim and passive bystanders. Six-hundred…

What does it mean for students to flourish (to be well) in school, what school ecology would this require, and what capabilities to live a flourishing life should schools help students develop? In this article, we report on a study that inquired into these three questions from the perspective of the students themselves, which is a perspective…

Relationships with teachers are a central component of a student's school environment, and have been shown to be related to school engagement and persistence in secondary school. Working alliance is a conceptualization of professional relationships that emphasizes not only the emotional bond between a professional and their client, but also their…

Latent class analysis was performed to identify clusters of items on the Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health -- School Connectedness Scale among students. Cluster membership was explored by student-reported ethnicity. The sample included students attending Canadian secondary schools in two waves of the COMPASS study: Years 4 (Y4:2015/16)…

We conducted two field studies to examine whether songwriting retreats held in a natural setting would increase nature connectedness, as well as improve emotional well-being and performance on a creative reasoning task. In the first study, high school students took part in songwriting instruction either in their school or at a national wildlife…

Most educational climate research is conducted among (day school) students who spend the bulk of their young lives outside of school, potentially limiting the amount of climate variance that can be captured. Boarding school students, on the other hand, spend much of their lives at school and thus offer a potentially unique perspective on…

Our study is framed according to a transformational-sociocritical approach to an education for sustainable development (ESD) that, in particular, considers landscapes as learning contexts of potential use for fostering engagement in the areas of environmental protection and sustainable development. In keeping with this perspective, we surveyed…

The aim of this study was to examine how mathematics tracking in high school (i.e., the practice of grouping students into basic or advanced sequences of courses) shapes students' perceived competence and their perception of the usefulness of their math courses. We hypothesized that the socioeducational environment of the math classroom (i.e.,…