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This study, conducted with a person-oriented approach, aimed to assess whether students who are positively engaged in school activities and daily practices perceive their school climate differently from students who feel distant and less engaged in school. To achieve this aim, by means of a Latent Profile Analysis with the 3-step approach, we first identified student profiles on the basis of their levels of school engagement and burnout, and then verified whether the school climate perceptions differed for the various profiles. The study involved 1065 Italian middle-school students (49% females, Mage = 11.77). School climate perceptions were assessed with the Multidimensional School Climate Questionnaire. Multidimensional measures were used for student engagement and school burnout. Four student profiles, labelled Cynically disengaged (5.9%), Moderately disengaged (21.6%), Peacefully engaged (46.1%) and Tenseley engaged (26.4%), were identified. The first two profiles involved low levels of engagement and high levels of cynical burnout, with the former showing more extreme scores. The other two profiles depicted engaged students, with the latter also revealing feelings of pressure and disillusion. The four profiles differed in their school climate perceptions, with the Peacefully engaged students reporting the highest scores and the Cynically disengaged students embodying the most critical perceptions. The study’s educational implications are discussed.

In this article, we present a multidimensional school climate questionnaire, based on an adaptation and validation of the Socio-Educational Environment Questionnaire, which is an instrument developed in Canada, assessing several dimensions of school climate. In particular, the aim of this research was to create a Multidimensional School Climate Questionnaire, which is adding to the original measure by testing a second-order factor model. We conducted two studies with different samples of middle school students (aged from 10 to 16 years) from Northern Italy (Study 1: 575 students and Study 2: 1070 students), and collected data on the psychometric features of the instrument, its reliability and validity. In particular, in Study 1, we carried out the adaptation process and an exploratory factor analysis. In Study 2, we conducted first- and second-order confirmatory factor analysis and tested the associations with school engagement and burnout scales. Overall, our results supported the stability of the adaptation and offered further insights into the original instrument. Assessment implications are discussed.

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Rejection sensitivity (RS) is a cognitive and affective disposition to defensively expect, perceive, and overreact to signs of rejection by others. The current study examined the role of RS as a mediating mechanism underlying the relation between school relations with peers and teachers and solitude in early adolescence. Italian middle school students ( N = 656; females = 50.9%; [Formula: see text]) reported their RS, quality of relationships with their friends and teachers, peer-related loneliness, and attitudes toward aloneness. The results showed direct associations between school relations and RS components, as well as between RS and the three dimensions of solitude. Moreover, structural equation models showed that anxious RS and RS expectations, but not angry RS, mediated the association between school relations and solitude. The present study contributes to our understanding of the key mechanisms underlying the association between school relations and solitude.