Academic Goals and Attitudes Towards Institutional Authority: A Relationship Mediated by Life Satisfaction and Sense of Belonging to the School

Academic success is conditioned by different factors, related to academic goals, life satisfaction, and feelings of belonging to the school. This article aims to assess whether beliefs, attributions (academic goals), and feelings (life satisfaction and sense of belonging to the school) do or do not influence attitudes towards school authority (school, teachers, learning, norms, and families). A total of 510 students from six secondary schools participated and four questionnaires were used: academic goals, life satisfaction, attitude towards institutional authority, and sense of belonging to school. The focus was on the description of academic goals and negative attitudes towards authority, focusing on the mediating role of school belonging and life satisfaction. Descriptive, variance, and mediation analyses were conducted. The questionnaire with the highest scores was sense of belonging to school. The dimension with the least influence on negative attitudes within academic goals was social reinforcement. Males showed more negative attitudes towards authority, and an indirect and significant relationship was observed between academic goals and negative attitudes towards authority, mediated by life satisfaction and sense of belonging to school. In conclusion, the role of the school as a protective agent is confirmed. Therefore, intervening in negative attitudes towards authority would solve coexistence problems and increase life satisfaction, expectations of academic performance, and the feeling of belonging to the school.