Lien entre sources proximales de soutien social et désengagement scolaire : le sentiment de privation relative comme signal d’alerte

Introduction

Youth school disengagement is a matter for concern. The contribution of the present argumentation is to articulate research from educational psychology on the links between sources of social support and school engagement with some models from social psychology on social stigmatization in order to propose an integrative view of school disengagement. A section will be devoted to the link between each of the student's proximal sources of social support (teachers, peers, parents and family group memberships) and school engagement. It will then be argued that this link could be mediated by feelings of relative deprivation, i.e., feelings of being unfairly treated compared to more advantaged classmates.

Discussion

The articulation of research in educational psychology and social psychology allows to argue that if a student feels less well treated than his or her classmates by parents, peers, teachers or because of group membership, he or she is likely to withdraw mentally from school (or disengage psychologically) and to disengage academically by engaging in disruptive behaviors.

Conclusion

The feelings of relative deprivation experienced by the student who feels deprived in the perceived social support related to his or her school life could serve as a warning signal of school disengagement risk.