Validation de l’échelle Sentiments Sur l’École (SSE) auprès d’élèves de 6 à 11 ans : une traduction enrichie du Feelings about School (FAS)

Development of a New Scale to Assess Students' Autodetermination At School (AAS)

The Autodetermination At School (AAS) hetero-evaluative scale was created and validated in a French teacher population with the aim of quantifying, in an ecological way, the commitment at school of elementary students. After establishing the scale's face validity, AAS was tested with an exploratory factor analysis, a confirmatory factor analysis, a convergent validity analysis, a test-retest analysis and an inter-individual analysis. The EFA highlighted three distinct factors and the CFA validated the reliability of a three-factor model for AAS with relevant fits and indices. The first dimension concerns teacher perception of academic commitment, reflecting both child performance and autonomous motivation. The second and third ones reflect teacher perception of the child's social commitment, to their peers as well as to their teacher. Consequently, AAS is a useful, reliable and robust psychometric instrument that emphases how intrinsic motivation and performance are closely linked. It also considers the importance of social child commitment at school. The inter-individual analysis revealed trends of grade, gender and school environment effects.

Abstract Graphic Creativity, Feelings about School, and Engagement in the School Environment: What Are the Interindividual Differences between Gifted and Non-Gifted Children?

This study examines interindividual differences between gifted and non-gifted children in the school environment. Three distinct measurement tools were used to enable a multimodal approach of gifted and non-gifted children with abstract graphic creativity, feelings about school and engagement in the school environment being considered. The results obtained from 328 children (including 45 gifted children) revealed that the gifted children obtained scores significantly higher than non-gifted children in terms of self-determination, feelings about school, and creativity. In addition, a gap appears among gifted children between their significantly higher scores for motivation and intellectual skills versus standard scores for their socio-affective development. Such results are consistent with the idea of asynchronous development, which is characteristic of gifted children (cognitive and conative vs. socio-affective sphere), offering perspectives for more adapted support for these pupils in elementary school.