The Future of Education

The present study aimed to investigate the impacts of external variables of school trajectories on the students’ subjective perceptions of interpersonal relationships and sense of belonging in school, in addition to the expectations regarding education. To this end, we used the IAFREE-A questionnaire, which is based on the perspective of five related dimensions of school dropout risk [1]: students’ relationship with the school (SSc), family (SF), school professionals (SP), community (SC), and students’ relationship with themselves (SSt). Thus, a Structural Equation Modeling was used to investigate the influence of SSC, SF, SP, and SC on SSt variables, using a synthetic dataset generated through the Gaussian Copula technique, using a real dataset of 3,678 students from four states in Brazil. This data generation method estimates new responses based on the association between variables in the real dataset, reproducing its factorial structure, and was used in this study due to the General Law of Data Protection (LGPD), ensuring ethical compliance through the use of anonymized data. Nationwide data collection using real-world data is currently being conducted in Brazil. The explanatory model showed excellent results [χ²(898) = 11459.827; CFI = 0.983; TLI = 0.980; SRMR = 0.038; RMSEA = 0.034 (0.034–0.035)], with regression coefficients indicating a substantial contribution of the perception of school as a safe place to students’ levels of interpersonal relationships (B=0.82, p<.001) and expectations regarding education (B=0.59, p<.001), indicating that the higher the perception of school as a safe place, the higher the levels of expectations regarding education and interpersonal relationships. Moreover, School management/organization was the strongest predictor of sense of belonging (B =0.91, p<.001), indicating that an increase in School management and organization leads to an increase in the perception of belonging.