Psychosocial School Environment

According to Sagar and Kaplan (1972), next to family, the school is the most important experience in the process of child development. When the child enters the school arena, he or she is presented with new opportunities in terms of socialization and cognitive development. These opportunities are provided in different measures in different schools and may have a direct impact on the cognitive and the affective behaviours in students.

According to Wubbels (2005) it is vital for improving student learning to influence student 's perceptions of the learning environment. The school environment, as it applies to the educational setting, refers to the atmosphere, the tone, the ambience or climate that pervades the setting that focuses on human behaviour

In this case, it is the student’s perceptions of the school environment and their reaction to those perceptions that are of importance (Maehr, 1991).

A research study conducted by Haapasalo, Välimaa and Kannas (2010) concluded that school engagement, school strain, and teacher‐student relations were found to be the most influential predictors in the psychosocial school environment regarding perceived school performance.

The perception of the psychosocial school environment can be understood with six dimensions. The creative stimulation can be defined as the teacher’s conducting activities to provide conditions and opportunities to stimulate creative thinking (Misra, 1984).

The cognitive encouragement is defined as the teacher’s behaviour to stimulate cognitive development of student by encouraging his actions or behaviours (Misra, 1984). Teachers provide personal and instructional supports meant to facilitate the developing sense of student autonomy

Permissiveness is defined as the school climate in which students are provided opportunities to express their views freely and act according to their desires with no interruption from teachers (Misra,

(2002) proposed a five beliefs model about the consequences of failure that are associated with threat appraisal and feared. To measure these beliefs, Conroy and colleagues developed the Performance Failure Appraisal Inventory (PFAI; Conroy et. al., 2002) which differentiates five fears of failure: fear of experiencing shame and embarrassment, fear of devaluing one’s self-estimate, fear of having an uncertain future, fear of important others losing interest and fear of upsetting important other.

Fear of failure may be construed as a self-evaluative framework that influences how the individual defines, orients to, and experiences failure in achievement situations (Heckhausen, 1991). A research study investigated the relationship between fear of failure, disorganization, and affective well-being while preparing for a college exam and concluded that fear of failure negatively predicted change in affective well-being. The affective well-being in turn predicted change in disorganization during exam preparation and exam performance (Berger & Freund,