Students' School Satisfaction: The Role of Classroom Climate, Self-efficacy, and Engagement

Students' satisfaction with school is subjective, cognitive appraisal of overall positivity of school experiences, and precisely because it represents the key aspect of children's overall perception of quality of life, it is important to find out what influences students' school satisfaction and to which extent. The goal of this research was to establish whether self-efficacy and engagement function as mediating variables in the relationship between classroom climate and students' school satisfaction. The research included 597 students from primary schools in Zagreb, Croatia. A structural equation model was designed and tested. The model testing showed that positive classroom climate has statistically significant and positive effects on self-efficacy and engagement. Furthermore, self-efficacy has a significant positive impact on explaining engagement. At the same time, negative classroom climate has a significant positive influence on engagement, which in tum contributes to the final effect on school satisfaction. The model has explained 56% of the school satisfaction variance in total.