Boarding school has been a feature of education systems for centuries. Minimal large-scale quantitative data have been collected to examine its association with important educational and other outcomes. The present study represents one of the largest studies into boarding school conducted to date. It investigates boarding school and students’ motivation, engagement, and psychological well-being (e.g., life satisfaction, interpersonal relationships)—controlling for sociodemographic, achievement, personality, and school covariates. The main sample comprised 5,276 high school students (28% boarding students; 72% day students) from 12 high schools in Australia. A subsample of 2,002 students (30% boarding students; 70% day students) had pretest data, enabling analyses of gains or declines in outcomes across the school year. Results indicated predominant parity between boarding and day students on most outcome factors, some modest positive results favoring boarding students, and no notable differences in gains or declines on outcomes between boarders and day students over the course of one academic year. Implications for researchers, the boarding sector, parents, and students are discussed.
Western research has characterized approaches to learning for specific learning tasks as discrete deep and surface approaches, distinguished by whether the intention is to understand or memorize. A more appropriate classification scheme for Hong Kong research is a continuum between deep and surface poles. In this article, the authors examine whether this characterization applies also to the West. University students in Australia ( n = 1,146) and Hong Kong ( n = 1,266) complete the revised Study Process Questionnaire. There are no effects by either discipline or study level in either country. Multiple-group analyses using structural equation modeling show configural invariance across the two samples, suggesting that the continuum characterization of approaches to learning is likely to be applicable for Western counterparts. Hong Kong students had higher mean scores for both deep and surface approaches, showing their greater use of intermediate approaches.
This study represents an initial investigation of key SLT constructs in the Japanese context. Results suggest some SLT constructs are meaningful in this context, but further scale development may be desirable before more advanced modeling is employed.
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