The role of attachment to school and open classroom climate for discussion on adolescent pro-social engagement

Abstract

The present study aims to verify how attachment to school and open classroom climate for discussion is related to adolescent’ pro-social engagement. Participants were adolescents from Lithuania (N = 1741, 727 boys and 1014 girls, age 15-19 years). To measure school atmosphere we used the Attachment to school scale from School atmosphere questionnaire (Ruchkin, Schwab-Stone, & Vermeiren, 2004) and Open classroom climate for discussion scale (Torney-Purta, et al., 2001). To measure prosocial engagement we used the School activity scale (Noack, 2003), Voluntary activity scale, and Future social activity scale (both constructed for this longitudinal study by the authors of this paper). The cluster analyses procedure using a modified LICUR procedure from the statistical package SLEIPNER (Bergman, Magnusson, & El Khouri, 2003) revealed five different groups of adolescents according to their perceived attachment to school and open classroom climate for discussion. MANOVA results revealed that those five groups differ in school activity, volunteering, and future social participation.