The effectiveness of teaching six interpersonal skills on academic hope and students’ sense of connectedness with school

The Porpouse of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of interpersonal communication skills training on academic hope and students’ sense of connectedness with school. A quasi experimental design was employed with pretest, posttest and control group. The population of this study included all sixth grade male students in Zahak city (Sistan and Baluchestan province) in the academic year 2021-2022 (N=413). The sample consisted of 30 students who were selected by multistage cluster sampling and randomly assigned to two groups, experimental (n=15) and control (n=15), were assigned. The data collection instrument was the academic hope scale (Khormayie & Kamari, 2017) and students’ sense of connectedness with school (Brew, Beatty & Watt, 2004) questionnaire that all participants completed as the pre-test. Then, the communication skill training program (Ahmadi et al, 2013) was conducted in the experimental group for eight sessions. Finally, the same questionnaire was completed by both experimental and control groups. Then, the data was analyzed using covariance analysis. The findings indicated that communication skills training can affect academic hope and students’ sense of connectedness with school (p-value<0/01). Therefore, interpersonal communication skills should be taught as one of the subjects in order to promote the academic hope and students’ sense of of connectedness with school should be considered.