Perception of quality of school life, sense of school membership and resistance behaviors: A study on secondary school students

Students spend most of their time at school. The fact that students are happy and comfortable in the school environment will increase and influence their sense of belongingness. If students love their school experiences and feel themselves belonging to school, they will not exhibit resistance behaviors. Students' perceptions of quality of school life, sense of school membership and resistance behaviors are the factors affecting each other as well as affected by each other. In this context, it was aimed in the study to investigate the perceptions of quality of school life, sense of school membership and resistance behaviours of the 6th, 7th and 8th grade students from different socioeconomic-level schools in central districts of Adana. This is a descriptive study in the survey model aiming to examine the perceptions of school quality of life, sense of school membership and resistance behaviors of secondary school students. The population of the study consists of 524 secondary school students (6th, 7th and 8th grade) from from different socioeconomic-level schools (low-medium-high) in central districts (Seyhan, Yüreğir and Çukurova) of Adana. In the study, "Quality of School Life Scale" (Sarı, 2007), "Psychological Sense of School Membership Scale" which was developed by Goodenow (1993) and adapted to Turkish by Sarı (2015), "Student' Resistance Behavior Scale" (Sarı, 2018) and "Personal Information Form" were employed for data collection. The data were analyzed via statistical software. Descriptive statitistics, Mann Whitney-U test, Kruskal Wallis test, correlation and regression analysis were performed in data analysis process. It was seen as a result of the study that the perception of the students studying in the schools in Adana for the quality of school life is of medium level. The students' perceptions of quality of school life show significant difference in favour of girls by gender, 6th grade students by class level and higher socioeconomic level schools by socioeconomic level of the school; however, there is no significant difference according to educational level of parents and monthly income level of the family. It was found out that students' sense of school membership is of medium level. There is no significant difference in students' sense of school membership according to gender, class level, educational level of parents, socioeconomic level of school and monthly income level of the family. It was revealed that students' resistance behaviours are close to low level. Students' resistance behaviours show significant difference in favour of male students by gender while the difference is in favour of 8th grade students when compared to 6th grade students, but in favour of 7th grade students by comparison with 8th grade students. On the other hand, there is no significant difference in terms of educational level of parents, socioeconomic level of school and monthly income level of the family. As a result of the correlation analysis performed between students' perceptions of quality of school life, sense of school membership and resistance behaviours, a positive and significant relation was revealed between students' perceptions of quality of school life and sense of school membership; whereas, there is a negative significant relation between students' perceptions of quality of school life and resistance behaviours. Likewise, there is negative significant relation between students' sense of school membership and resistance behaviours. In addition, regression analysis showed that scores from "Quality of School Life Scale" and "Psychological Sense of School Membership Scale" account for the 23% of total variation in Student' Resistance Behavior Scale. In other words, perceptions of quality of school life and sense of school membership have been seen to be a significant predictor of resistance behaviours. Keywords: Quality of school life, sense of school membership, student resistance behaviours, secondary school students