The alienation to school related to school life quality in secondary school students

This research has two major purposes. The first one is to identify the school life quality of secondary education students and their perception of alienation to school. Secondly, it aims to point out the correlation between their perception of school life quality and alienation to school. Survey and correlational research models were both used in order to fulfill above mentioned purposes. The population of this research was 21903 10th, 11th and 12th grade students whom are Secondary Education in Malatya city center during the 2012-2013 educational year. The samples of the research were the 515 students that are chosen by the sampling method from the stratified. The data were collected by the "High School Life Qulity Scale" developed by Sarı, Ötünç ve Erceylan (2007) and "Student Alienation Scale" developed by Sanberk (2003). The SPSS software was used to analyze the data collected. The analysis of the data first included descriptive statistics. In order to determine whether or not there has been any meaningful difference among the students' perceptions of school life quality and alienation to school according to sex variable, Mann-Whitney U test was used. Kruskal-Wallis H test has been used to determine whether there was any meaningful difference among the students' perceptions according to grade level and school size and school type variables or not. At the end of Kruskal-Wallis H test where there have been meaningful differences, Mann-Whitney U test with Bonferroni correction was used to point out the source or sources of the difference. Furthermore, when significant differences were found between groups, the effect size of the differences was tested using eta-square (η²) correlation coefficient. Spearman Brown rank-order correlation coefficient was used determine the relationship between High school life quality and the scales of alienation to school with its sub-scales. As a result of descriptive statistics, it is pointed out that the secondary education students are involved in the statements about High school life quality and the scales of alienation to school in "moderate". When the student perceptions about statements located in High school life quality scales were evaluated according to independent variables, meaningful differences were found in perceptions of students in regards to feelings against school and social activities sub-scale with sex variable, yet, no meaningful differences were found in general scale, status and extent of communication between student and teacher, school administration and other students sub-scales. Meaningful differences were found in regards to communication between student and teacher, feelings against school, school administration, communication with other students sub-scales and in general scale with grade level variable, yet, no meaningful differences were found in extent of status and social activities sub-scales with grade level variable. Meaningful differences were found in regards to feelings against school, school administration, communication with other students and status sub-scales with school type variable, yet, no meaningful differences were found in extent of communication between student and teacher, social activities sub-scales and in general scale with school type variable. Meaningful differences were found in extent of communication between student and teacher, feelings against school, school administration, communication with other students sub-scales with school size variable, yet, no meaningful differences were found in extent of status, social activities and in general scale with school size variable. When the student perceptions about statements located in Student Alienation Scale were evaluated according to independent variables, meaningful differences were found in perceptions of students in regards to powerlessness with sex variable. Yet, no meaningful differences were found in extent of meaninglessness, normlessness, isolation sub-scales and in general scale. Meaningful differences were found in regards to powerlessness, meaninglessness, isolation sub-scales and in general scale with grade level variable, yet, no meaningful differences were found in extent of normlessness sub-scale with grade level variable. Meaningful differences were found in regards to normlessness, isolation sub-scales and in general scale with school type variable, yet, no meaningful differences were found in extent of powerlessness and meaninglessness sub-scales with school type variable. Meaningful and negative oriented relationships were found between the school life qualities and their perception of alienation to school of Secondary education students.