Does teacher affective support matter? An investigation of the relationship among perceived teacher affective support, sense of belonging, academic emotions, academic self-efficacy beliefs, and academic effort in middle school mathematics classrooms

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship among perceived teacher affective support, sense of belonging, academic enjoyment, academic hopelessness, academic self-efficacy, and academic effort in middle school mathematics classrooms. The targeted relationships were examined through the test of an hypothesized structural model. Person-environment fit and social-cognitive theories were adopted for this particular investigation.; Previous research pointed out the need for the assessment of the role of affective learning environments on students' motivational, social, emotional, and academic outcomes (Turner, Meyer, Midgley, & Patrick, 2003; Wentzel, 2003). Considering the central role of teachers in classrooms (Fraser, 2003), for the current investigation, the Teacher Affective Support Scale was developed. This scale gathered theoretically-supported essential components of affective support determined as following: Caring, respect, concern for and interest in students, valuing, recognition, fair treatment, encouragement, high expectations, and listening.; The population selected for this investigation was early adolescents because of the critical significance of this developmental stage in human life (Roeser, Eccless, & Sameroff, 1998). The current inquiry was carried out in mathematics classrooms due to the knowledge that mathematics is one of the primary school subjects related strongly to negative emotions and low self-efficacy beliefs reported by students at all ages. To test the factor structure, internal consistency, construct validity, and operationalization quality of each measure presented in the instrument, two pilot studies were conducted in three middle schools with the participation of 137 seventh- and eighth-grade students taught by three mathematics teachers. After satisfactory outcomes were obtained, the actual data were collected in five middle schools located in three public school districts in a Midwestern city. Three hundred and seventeen seventh- and eighth-grade students taught by 10 mathematics teachers responded to the 55-item Likert-type self-report questionnaire. The hypothesized model was tested using structural equation modeling. The goodness of fit of the model to the sample data was acceptable. Findings were reported based on the reduced structural model. This model also provided a satisfactory fit to the given data (chi2 [892 df, N = 317] = 1956.729, p= .00, CFI = .973, TLI= .970, RMSEA = 0.061 (with 90% CI lower bound = .058 and upper bound = .065)).; The results showed that perceived teacher affective support was significantly related to early adolescents' sense of belonging, academic enjoyment, academic hopelessness, academic self-efficacy beliefs, and academic effort outcomes directly and/or indirectly. Other hypotheses were also supported in the predicted directions. Overall, the model explained 48% of the variances in both sense of belonging and academic enjoyment, 43%, 34%, and 17% of the variances in academic self-efficacy, academic effort, and academic hopelessness, respectively. The implications for future research along with the limitations of the present study were discussed.