Out-of-School Activities and Academic Achievement: The Mediating Role of Self-Beliefs

TLDR: In this paper, the authors present a theoretical analysis of how students spend their out-of-school hours and how they promote identification with school, and discuss both theory and empirical evidence suggesting that academic relatedness has both direct and indirect influences on achievement.

Abstract: The ways students spend their out-of-school hours can affect their achievement. We present a theoretical analysis of this process. We describe out-of-school activities along two primary dimensions: (a) the extent to which they are related to academic material, and (b) the extent to which they promote identification with school. We discuss both theory and empirical evidence suggesting that academic relatedness has both direct and indirect influences on achievement, whereas identification with school has an indirect influence on achievement. The indirect influence of academic relatedness and identification operate in part though student self-beliefs. We then discuss theory and research linking these two dimensions to student self-beliefs and self-beliefs to academic motivation and achievement.