Abstract:

Education has a vital role to play in enabling young people to develop competencies that enable them to fulfil their potential and contribute to the wellbeing of society (OECD, 2018). Effective education systems began to focus not only on students’ academic performance, but to students’ wellbeing as well (OECD, 2017). Although for many years research in education and psychology attempt to identify factors that contributes to students’ academic and personal outcomes during school years, however there is still a need to analyse psychological mechanism, which enables to understand the process of change what is critical important when planning and implementing effective intervention strategies. In this study we focus on the link between perceived environmental competitiveness and two indicators of education system – academic performance and wellbeing – via the attitude towards learning. However, value of academic achievement, wellbeing and competitiveness might differ between countries, therefore we examine European Union country differences as moderators of the link between indicators of education system effectiveness and perceived environmental competitiveness. Data were drawn from a from PISA 2018. Participants were from 24 EU education systems. Path analyses were used with reading achievement and subjective wellbeing as dependent variables, the perceived environmental competitiveness as an independent variable and two indicators of students’ attitudes towards learning (performance and task mastery) as mediators. The results revealed that environment competitiveness affects academic achievement and wellbeing via students’ attitudes toward learning and these links are moderated by education systems. The findings have implications for educators seeking to understand cultural silent bounds between environment competitiveness and adaptive education outcomes.

Keywords:

Competitiveness, academic achievement, wellbeing, attitude towards learning, PISA 2018.