The Effects of School Bonding on High School Seniors’ Academic Achievement

When students feel connected to or have strong bonds to their schools, they are more likely to experience academic success. They stay in school longer and attend school regularly (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2009b). Yet only about 50% of the youth in schools report feeling connected to or engaged in school (Blum, 2005). Given that school bonding and alienation are opposite sides of the same coin, a significant number of students may be experiencing alienation from school (Schulz & Rubel, 2011). School bonding, or students' connectedness to their school, is linked to health, social, and educational outcomes for youth (Blum, 2005; CDC, 2009b). Moreover, school bonding is one of the developmental assets that increase students' ability to overcome life's challenges and meet academic success (Benson, 2002; Scales, 2005). The resiliency literature identifies developmental assets as protective factors that are precursors to resiliency in youth (Benard, 1991, 2004; Benson, 2002; Bryan, 2005). Three external developmental assets (caring school climate, safety, and school boundaries or rules) and two internal developmental assets (school engagement and bonding to school) are consistently mentioned in the school bonding and connectedness literature (Blum, 2005; Blum & Libbey, 2004; Jimerson, Campos, & Greif, 2003; Libbey, 2004). Also called school connectedness, school engagement, and school attachment, school bonding is a negative predictor of school dropout and failure as well as risky health behaviors and school-related delinquency among youth (Lee & Smith-Adcock, 2005; Libbey, 2004; Payne, Gottfredson, & Gottfredson, 2003; Smith & Sandhu, 2004). Bonding or connectedness is a powerful need and motivator for children and adults; however, it is underemphasized and underutilized in promoting students' prosocial behaviors and academic success (Bryan, Day-Vines, Griffin, & Moore-Thomas, 2012; Shochet, Dadds, Ham, & Montague, 2006; Smith & Sandhu, 2004; Townsend & McWhirter, 2005). Indeed, school bonding is significant and may have important implications for students' academic achievement. As a result of an emerging research-based link between school bonding and academic-related outcomes for adolescents, policy makers, educators, and school counselors have become increasingly interested in ways to more fully understand the variables and environments that foster youth's bonding or connectedness to their schools (CDC, 2009b; Galassi & Akos, 2004; Scales, 2005; Smith & Sandhu, 2004). A complication of this work, however, is that school bonding is studied across a plethora of fields (i.e., education, psychology, sociology, human development, and health disciplines), which use a wide variety of terms, such as school connectedness, school attachment, school engagement, school involvement, school identification, school bonding, teacher support, and school climate, all to mean similar things (Blum, 2005; Blum & Libbey, 2004; Libbey, 2004). Although the varying theoretical frameworks and definitions have led to some interesting perspectives, the interrelatedness among these constructs; the similarities in measures used to measure different constructs; and, concurrently, the differences in measures used to measure the same construct have led to much confusion, fragmentation, and variation in findings (Libbey, 2004). In this article, we begin to bridge the gap between the many terms used in the school bonding literature to examine the link between adolescents' bonds to school and their academic achievement. Toward this aim, we use the term school bonding and use Maddox and Prinz's (2003) definition to identify the components and measures of school bonding. Maddox and Prinz built on Hirschi's (1969) conceptualization of school bonding as a multidimensional construct composed of attachment, commitment, involvement, and beliefs components. Using Hirschi's conceptualization, they found that school bonding was multidimensional with four specific components: (a) attachment to school, (b) attachment to teachers and school personnel, (c) school commitment (comprising both beliefs and behaviors), and (d) school involvement. …