Tackling early leaving from education and training (ELET) is one of the headline targets for education policy in the European Union. Although ELET rates have been decreasing in most member states, male, socially disadvantaged and immigrant students remain overrepresented in ELET figures. Moreover, students in vocational tracks and students who…

Student participation and cognitive and emotional engagement in learning activities play a key role in student academic achievement and are driven by student motivational characteristics such as academic self-concept. These relations have been well established with variable-centered analyses, but in this study, a person-centered analysis was…

While school self-concept is an important facilitator of a student's school engagement, previous studies rarely investigated whether it may also explain the change in students' school engagement during secondary school. Moreover, as social relations play an increasingly important role in adolescence, the current research distinguishes between the…

Perceived social support has been widely recognized as having beneficial effects on a person's development, and adolescence is no exception. The objective of this article is to go beyond this "stereotypical" vision of friendship by showing that social support does not always have a positive and direct effect on adolescents' academic…

The belief that intelligence is malleable has important consequences for achievement and motivation (Blackwell et al. "Child Development," v78, p246-263. 2007; Dweck, 1999; Robins & Pals, "Self and Identity," v1, p313-336, 2002). However, believing that it is possible to improve intelligence does not necessarily mean…

This study examined the development of school-related causality beliefs which are children's generalized perceptions of the utility or power of different categories of specific means in producing school outcomes. Based on the action theory perspective, we analyzed the developmental model of these beliefs as well as the trajectories of the…

Secondary school teachers often complain that their students show a disengaged attitude in class. Students do not prepare for lessons, they show a passive attitude towards classroom activities and they have a limited awareness of their own learning process. Based on a pilot study, four homework assignments were designed, implemented, and evaluated…