The Effectiveness of Encouragement Training in Academic Anxiety and Sense of Belonging to School in students

Encouragement is an important concept of Adlerian psychology and refers to the expression of confirmation through language or other symbolic illustration to instill courage in a person within the context of addressing a challenging situation or recognizing a potential. Receiving encouragement would enhance social connectedness, academic performance, motivation and self-efficacy in students. The present study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of encouragement training on academic anxiety and school connectedness in female high school students. The study was a pretest-posttest control group quasi-experimental design. Statistical population included all female students of the 10th grade of high school in Baharestan Education District 1 (Iran) in 2022. Participants were 30 female students were selected by accessible sampling and randomly assigned to in experimental and control groups (15 people in each group). Participants responded to Beatty and Brew student sense of connectedness with school scale (2005) and Abolghasemi et al.'s academic anxiety scale (1996). The experimental group received eight one-hour sessions of self-encouragement training and the control group did not receive any training. Data were analyzed by univariate and multivariate analysis of covariance. The results indicated that encouragement training decreased academic anxiety and increased students' school connectedness (p<.01). Therefore, providing this training is considered useful strategy for improving the motivational and social outcomes in students.