Students’ Well-being And Self-efficacy Beliefs During The Covid-19 Crisis

In Belgium, the covid-19 crisis led to the closure of schools from 16th March 2020. In secondary education, from 18th May 2020, some grades (mainly grades 8 and 12) were allowed to return to school twice a week. On September 1st 2020, all secondary education students went back to school on a full time basis, but have to wear facial masks. The aims of this study are twofold. First, we aim to shed light on secondary students’ well-being during the covid-19 crisis. Second, we will detail how the educational system responded to the crisis and the impact on learners’ motivation. Secondary education students were invited to fill out a short online questionnaire at two moments. The first survey was conducted in June 2020 and 6,015 secondary school students responded. The second survey was launched at the end of September, and 2,423 students responded. Both questionnaires were very similar and focused on students’ motivation (e.g. self-efficacy) and well-being (e.g. happiness), relying on previously validated scales (Galand & Philippot, 2002; Hospel et al., 2016; Olivier et al., 2020; Holmberg, 2020). Two questions on well-being had previously been used in the HBSC 2018 study (Inchley et al., 2020). Regarding students’ well-being during the covid-19 crisis, in June 2020, overall students reported to be slightly less happy compared to the HBSC 2018 results (for grades 7-8: (Chi²(3, N = 4979) = 20.23, p < .001; for grades 9-12: (Chi²(3, N = 10968) = 144.16, p < .001). At the end of September 2020 (second survey), results in grades 7-8 are comparable to June: students appear a bit less happy compared to the HBSC in spring 2018 (Chi²(3, N = 3968) = 18.72, p < .001, 27% « not happy » compared to 20% in 2018). The feelings of those in grades 9-12 appear to be more strongly impacted (Chi²(3, N = 8643) = 300.34, p < .001, 42% « not happy » compared to 23% in 2018). Regarding the way the educational system responded to the crisis, it is important to know that in the Spring of 2020, Ministry decided that summative assessments (planned in June) would be cancelled. Homework was provided for students, but had to focus on content already taught in class. Teachers were also expected to keep in touch with their students. Results indicate that a majority of students received homework (70.9 %). About half of students had regular contacts with their teachers (54.5 %), although only 27.5% spoke to a teacher at least once a week. Results from regression analysis indicate an interaction effect (B = 0.057, p = .005): the negative effect of the frequency of homework on pupils' sense of self-efficacy would mainly be present among pupils who report low frequency of contact with teachers and would not concern pupils who report having a lot of contact with teachers. Pupils who receive a lot of work to do but have little contact with teachers would therefore feel less able to do the work expected of them.