The Effects of Motivational Educational- Attachment to School Package on Academic Burnout and Academic Alienation in 10th-Grade Female Students

Academic burnout is a psychological syndrome caused by stress, study pressure, academic achievement, and high school demands on students. Some students have a negative attitude towards school during the school years (from elementary to high school). This process is called academic alienation. School motivation is among the basic prerequisites for learning and academic success. As a social individual, one of the most basic characteristics of individuals is the ability to relate to others; this skill creates attachment in individuals. Attachment to the school is defined as forming the student's relationship with the school and other school factors. Motivation and attachment to the school play a regulating role in human actions; thus, it affects psychosocial states and causes academic burnout and academic alienation by reducing participation in educational processes. Given the role of school and the importance of adolescence and coping with problems, this study examined the effects of motivational package training–attachment on burnout and academic alienation in 10th–grade female students.

The was a quasi–experimental study with pretest–posttest, a three–month follow–up, and a control group design. The study’s statistical population consisted of 10th–grade middle school female students in the third education district of Isfahan City, Iran, in 2019–2020 (N=140). To select a sample using the convenience sampling method, 36 subjects who attended a study and scored high in the Academic Burnout Inventory (Salmela–Aro & Näätänen, 2005) and Academic Alienation Inventory (Dillon & Grout, 1976) were randomly divided into the experimental (n=18) and control (n=18) groups. The inclusion criteria were obtaining a higher academic burnout score and higher academic alienation score and collaborating students with research. The exclusion criteria included absence from more than one training session, non–cooperation, and students' withdrawal from participation in the training sessions. After pretest and grouping, the experimental group underwent a motivational–attachment to school training package for 10 sessions. The researcher prepared and validated the training package in qualitative research using the content analysis method per Attride–Stirling´s approach (2001) for 10th–grade high school students. To analyze the obtained data, descriptive statistics, including mean and standard deviation and inferential statistics, such as repeated–measures Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), Bonferroni test, and Independent Samples t–test (to compare the ages of the two groups) were used in SPSS at the significance level of p<0.05.

The repeated–measures ANOVA results indicated that respecting academic burnout, the main effect of the group (p=0.023), the main effect of time (p<0.001), and the interaction of group and time (p<0.001) were statistically significant. Concerning academic alienation, the main effect of the group (p<0.001), the main effect of time (p<0.001), and the interaction of the group and time (p<0.001) were statistically significant. Respecting academic burnout and academic alienation in the pretest–posttest (p<0.001) and pretest–follow–up (p<0.001) stages, the post–test–follow–up stages were not significant in the academic burnout variable (p=0.653); it was not significant in academic alienation (p=0.077), suggesting the continuity of the effect of the intervention in follow–up stage.

Based on the present research results, motivational–attachment training to school effectively reduced psychological problems, such as academic burnout and academic alienation in students.