THE RELATIONSHIP OF SCHOOL BELONGING AND FRIENDS VALUES TO ACADEMIC MOTIVATION AMONG URBAN ADOLESCENT STUDENTS

Students' subjective sense of school belonging recently has been ident ified as a potentially important influence on academic motivation, eng agement, and participation, especially among students from groups at r isk of school dropout. Students' friends also influence their academic motivation, sometimes negatively. In this study, the relationship amo ng early adolescent students' sense of school belonging, perceptions o f their friends' academic values, and academic motivation was investig ated among 301 African-American, White/Anglo, and Hispanic students in two urban junior high schools. School belonging was significantly ass ociated with several motivation-related measures-expectancy of success , valuing schoolwork, general school motivation, and self-reported eff ort. Students' beliefs about their friends' academic values were more weakly related to these outcomes. The correlations between school belo nging and the motivation-related measures remained positive and statis tically significant-even after the effects of friends' academic values were partialled out. School belonging was more highly associated with expectancy for success among Hispanic students than among African-Ame rican students, and among girls than among boys.