Modeling the Causal Relationship Between Sense of (Distributive and Procedural) Justice and the Sense of Belonging to School by Mediating Trust Among Middle School Students

Studies of sense of justice have become common in recent decades, but research in this domain has mainly targeted adults in workplaces and organizations or university students. Research that focuses on younger students (and their teachers) is less frequent, even though schools are arenas of constant resource and reward allocation whose fairness is of central concern, and which are expected to maintain institutionalized ‘fair’ procedures that are universally applied. Contending that justice experiences at school transmit messages about the wider society and affects students’ attitudes and behavior, we investigated the effects of students’ sense of distributive and procedural justice on their sense of belonging to school and on their social and institutional trust. Social trust implies that people in general or those of one’s group can be trusted, which is an essential motivator of civic engagement (Rosenberg, 1956). Institutional trust relates to the degree of trust given to state institutions, such as Parliament, political parties, the police, the army and the courts, which are responsible for running and defending the democratic society. Students’ sense of belonging in the class and in the school has attracted considerable academic attention in recent decades, both in the attempt to clarify its definition and measurement (Goodenow, 1993) and in the effort to empirically investigate its antecedents and its relationship with a variety of educational outcomes. The construct’s complexity and lack of clarity is reflected in the scholarly use of multiple synonyms for belonging, such as identification with school, bonding, attachment, commitment and engagement, as well as the antonyms of alienation, withdrawal and disaffection. Generally, three main types of perceived justice have been identified by social psychologists: Distributive, procedural and Interactional justice. Distributive justice including the distribution of resources according to some distribution principles such as equity, equality and the need (Adams, 1965). In the context of school research, distributive justice assessments target subjective evaluations of various educational resource allocations such as grades, attention, time, praise, status recognition, and caring (Kazemi, 2016 :3). Procedural justice refers to the fairness of the means by which distributions, or decisions about them, are made (Leventhal, 1980). Whereas sense of distributive justice is the individual’s evaluation that his/her share of ‘good’ (or ‘bad’) was fair, procedures defining the means of distribution develop within the framework of the specific distribution and are thus an institutional feature. In this study, the institutional framework is the school. Thibaut & Walker (1975) argued for an instrumental view of procedures and suggested that people consider just procedures to be important as they may be instrumental in maximizing outcomes. due to the impact of fair distribution of rewards and methods on the social attitudes of students, the focused of this study was on the distributive and procedural justice. Justice experiences at school convey messages about one’s own value and belonging to the group (Emler & Reicher, 2005). School-specific sense of justice may thus be an important prerequisite for the development of sense of belonging to the school and trustfulness of public authorities and of people and society in general (Gouveia-Pereira et al., 2004; Berti et al., 2010). Hence, we hypothesize:Hypothesis 1) There is a direct relationship between the dimensions of sense of justice (distributive and relational) and the senses of belonging to school among high school students.
Hypothesis 2) There is a direct relationship between the dimensions of sense of justice to school with trust in high school students.
Hypothesis 3) There is a direct relationship between trust and the feeling of belonging to a school among high school students.
Hypothesis 4) There is an indirect relationship between dimensions of sense of justice and sense of belonging to school (mediation effect of trust).

Matherial & Methods

The present study was descriptive-correlational. Data were gathered from 528 high-school students through relative stratified sampling wa y by using five scales:sense of justice by (Chory - assad &Paulsel’s 2004b), sense of belonging to school by (Goodenow, 1993), Institutional trust questionnaire designing by (Sabbagh et al, 2013) and Social trust based on Rosenberg’s (1956) notion of misanthropy. Structural equation modeling (SEM) were used to explore and compute the relationships between the examined variables.

Discussion of Results & Conclusions 

Path analysis results showed that the direct effect of procedural justice (0.35), distributive (0.34) and trust (0.23) on the sense of belonging to the school were positive at the level of 0.001 and also the direct effect of procedural justice )0.39) and distribution (0.36) on trust was positive and significant at the level of 0.001. On the other hand, the indirect effect of procedural justice (0.09) and distributive justice (0.08) on the sense of belonging to the school through trust was positive and significant at 0.01 level. So, it can be concluded that there is a positive and significant relationship between sense of (distributive and procedural) justice and sense of belonging to the school by mediating role of trust among high school students. The research findings mostly support our hypotheses about the expected effect of justice experiences. students’ sense of distributive justice in school seems, indeed, to be an experience that helps shape their sense of belonging and their social and institutional trust. From the results of this study, it can be concluded that the sense of justice in school increases the sense of cooperation and belonging to the school, builds trust in individuals and the education system and ultimately to the educational institution and government and these attitudes increase Participation of citizens in social and political activities to maintain national unity.