This study examined the diversity in feelings of loneliness among high-ability students. Individual differences (intelligence level, giftedness label, and personality) and differences in the social context (peer acceptance, peer rejection, victimization, and friendship quantity) of adolescents were considered as predictors of loneliness.…

Starting from observed gender differences in educational effort and because research considers motivation to be a personal student feature, this study had two aims. First, it examined whether autonomous and controlled motivation are shared by students within a school and whether such a motivation culture is associated with the school's student…

Principals (policy makers) have debated the progress in U.S. student performance for a half century or more. Informing these conversations, survey agents have administered seven million psychometrically linked tests in math and reading in 160 waves to national probability samples of selected cohorts born between 1954 and 2007. This study is the…

The purpose of this study was to test bidirectional relationships between (cyber)bullying and (a) bonding to school and (b) bonding to teachers. These relationships were examined while controlling for traditional and cyberbullying victimization, as well as gender and age. The sample consisted of 2,128 Belgian early adolescents, who participated in…

Based on Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000), this study tested whether changes in autonomous motivation toward physical education (AMPE) during the transition from elementary to secondary school can be predicted by changes in perceived need support from the physical education (PE) teacher and perceived physical school environment.…

According to the big-fish-little-pond (BFLP) model, the self-concept is not only influenced in a positive way by one's own achievement, but also in a negative way by one's relative achievement in comparison with one's immediate peers. This study investigates whether the BFLP effect also holds for second language acquisition. A random sample of…

The present study aims at unravelling the myriad of student-level (i.e., gender, socioeconomic status [SES], academic self-concept, achievement, ability, and occupational interests) and school-level (i.e., gender composition, maths composition, and SES composition) determinants of option choice in the academic track of secondary school in…

In the scientific literature, the debate around the school and class effect is polarized, because the variance between schools and classes is explained either by school and class process or by group composition. The first aim of this article is to shed light on this debate and move beyond it by reviewing qualitative and quantitative studies…