A Social Network Analysis of the Impact of a Teacher and Student Community on Academic Motivation in a Science Classroom

Manyu Li and Heather Nicole Stone
Additional contact information
Manyu Li: Department of Psychology, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, LA 70504, USA
Heather Nicole Stone: Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, LA 70504, USA

Societies, 2018, vol. 8, issue 3, 1-8

Abstract: (1) Background: The Teacher and student community plays an important role in students’ academic development. Previous studies showed that students’ academic success is influenced by their social relations in school. This study extended to use a mix of social network analysis and survey methodology to understand how eighth-grade students’ network and perceived teacher’s support relate to their academic motivation. (2) Methods: A total of 95 eighth graders with the same teacher in a middle school in the southeastern United States were recruited. (3) Results: Results showed that the number of friendship nominations received (i.e., in-degree), degree centrality and betweenness centrality significantly correlated with higher academic motivation. In addition, a regression model analysis showed that perceived teacher’s support, together with more friendship nominations, predicted higher academic motivation.

Keywords: academic motivation; social network analysis; school community; teacher-student relations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 A14 P P0 P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/8/3/68/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/8/3/68/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsoctx:v:8:y:2018:i:3:p:68-:d:165308

Access Statistics for this article

Societies is currently edited by Ms. Farrah Sun

More articles in Societies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().