Perceiving high or low home-school dissonance: Longitudinal effects on adolescent emotional and academic well-being

For some adolescents, the beliefs, values, and behavioral expectations at h ome and at school are in conflict, and negotiating the boundaries between t hese two contexts is difficult. We administered surveys, including a scale assessing perceptions of home-school dissonance, to an ethnically diverse s ample of students (N = 475) in the 5th grade in elementary school and the f ollowing year in middle school. Contrary to our hypothesis, African America n students did not report more dissonance than European American students. High dissonance students (top 3rd on the Dissonance scale) were more angry and self-deprecating, had lower self-esteem, were less hopeful, felt less a cademically efficacious, and had a lower grade point average than did low d issonance students (bottom 3rd on the scale). Additionally, high dissonance students experienced a greater decline in grade point average, and less of a decline in anger than did low dissonance students when they moved to mid dle school.