Validation de l’échelle Sentiments Sur l’École (SSE) auprès d’élèves de 6 à 11 ans : une traduction enrichie du Feelings about School (FAS)

Introduction

The lack of an efficient and ecological tool to assess the development of young students in the French-speaking areas has led to considering the adaptation of Feelings about School (FAS: Valeski & Stipek, 2001) and its enrichment within the French scale of Feelings at School (SSE). This scale is founded on the theory of self-systemic processes, namely on students basic psychological needs’ satisfaction: feeling competent, autonomous and in relation. The FAS distinguishes four dimensions of the schoolchild's experience: his relationship with his teacher (F1), his literacy skills (F2), his overall apprehensiveness of school (F3) and his mathematical skills (F4).

Objectives

Our validation of the internal consistency of the SSE with 494 children fulfills three objectives: to ensure the reliability of our translation of the FAS, to test its validity on a cohort including older individuals (6 to 11 years old) in an enriched version, capturing the artistic component.

Method

An exploratory factor analysis (EFA), a confirmatory factory analysis (CFA) and an ANOVA were conducted with the collected data.

Results

The EFA revealed the five expected factors (i.e., the four original FAS factors and the additional factor on art skills). The CFA then confirmed the reliability of the SSE. The ANOVA revealed a lower score at the SSE for older students (i.e., fifth graders).

Discussion

Promising for applicability, this validated and enriched French tool is intended to be used in scientific research, or in clinical practice, notably by educational psychologists, in order to apprehend the multiple facets of the development of schoolchildren.