School Climate Aspects and Student Absence: Understanding the Roles of Transformational Leadership

Abstract

This study was developed based on the theory of reasoned action that attributes a certain behavior to attitudes and subjective norms, in addition to the intrinsic motivation theory intended to enhance wanted attitudes. It focuses on the behavior of school attendance and how it is influenced by student attitudes towards school and parental engagement, as well as, how intrinsic motivational factors, in particular school aspects and transformational leadership, shape student attitudes towards school. The primary purpose of this study is to investigate interrelationships between student and school demographic variables, transformational leadership, and school climate aspects to understand how these interrelationships influence student attendance. The full structural equational model was used, relying on MPlus software, to examine these interrelationships between the variables in this study. The data is public data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015.