The role of social support in school adjustment during secondary education / El papel del apoyo social en el ajuste escolar en Educación Secundaria

BACKGROUND: During secondary education, a stage with a high risk of failure and school dropout, social support is an important contextual variable for the prevention of school maladjustment. The aim of this study is to examine a theoretical model of the explanatory capacity of social support in terms of school adjustment, understood as school engagement and perceived academic performance. METHOD: Participants were 1,468 students (51% girls; 49% boys) from the Basque Country, aged between 12 and 17 (M=14.03, SD=1.36). The study had an ex post facto cross-sectional design. The measurement instruments used were: TCMS -teacher support subscale, AFA-R -family support and peer support subscales, SEM -School Engagement Measure, and EBAE-10 - perceived academic performance subscale. Various different structural models were tested. RESULTS: The first-choice model was one in which social support predicts school engagement with perceived academic performance as a mediating variable: together, both variables predict 73% of school engagement. The strongest effect was that of teacher support, followed by family support, whereas friends were not found to have any direct effect on school adjustment variables. CONCLUSIONS: Teachers and families should strive to offer social support to students as a means of strengthening perceived academic self-efficacy and school engagement

ANTECEDENTES: durante la Educación Secundaria, etapa con riesgo de fracaso y abandono escolar, el apoyo social representa una variable contextual relevante para prevenir el desajuste escolar. El objetivo de este trabajo es examinar un modelo teórico sobre la capacidad explicativa del apoyo social sobre el ajuste escolar -implicación escolar y rendimiento académico percibido-. MÉTODO: participan 1.468 estudiantes (51% chicas; 49% chicos) con edades entre 12 y 17 años (M=14.03; DT=1.36) del País Vasco. Es un estudio con diseño ex post facto transversal. Las medidas empleadas son: TCMS -subescala apoyo profesorado-, AFA-R -subescalas apoyo familiar y apoyo amistades-, SEM -escala implicación escolar- y EBAE-10 -subescala rendimiento académico percibido-. Se comprueban varios modelos estructurales. RESULTADOS: el modelo de primera elección es el de predicción del apoyo social sobre la implicación escolar con el rendimiento académico percibido como variable mediadora: predicen conjuntamente un 73% de la implicación y prevalece el efecto del apoyo del profesorado, seguido del apoyo familiar, frente a la ausencia de efecto directo de amistades sobre las variables de ajuste escolar. CONCLUSIONES: el profesorado y la familia deben ofrecer apoyo social al alumnado para reforzar la percepción de autoeficacia académica y la implicación escolar

The role of social support in school adjustment during Secondary Education.

BACKGROUND: During secondary education, a stage with a high risk of failure and school dropout, social support is an important contextual variable for the prevention of school maladjustment. The aim of this study is to examine a theoretical model of the explanatory capacity of social support in terms of school adjustment, understood as school engagement and perceived academic performance. METHOD: Participants were 1,468 students (51% girls; 49% boys) from the Basque Country, aged between 12 and 17 (M=14.03, SD=1.36). The study had an ex post facto cross-sectional design. The measurement instruments used were: TCMS -teacher support subscale, AFA-R -family support and peer support subscales, SEM -School Engagement Measure, and EBAE-10 - perceived academic performance subscale. Various different structural models were tested. RESULTS: The first-choice model was one in which social support predicts school engagement with perceived academic performance as a mediating variable: together, both variables predict 73% of school engagement. The strongest effect was that of teacher support, followed by family support, whereas friends were not found to have any direct effect on school adjustment variables. CONCLUSIONS: Teachers and families should strive to offer social support to students as a means of strengthening perceived academic self-efficacy and school engagement.

Resilience as a Mediator of Emotional Intelligence and Perceived Stress: A Cross-Country Study.

Existing literature provides evidence of the connection between emotional intelligence and resilience, both concepts being adversely related to perceived stress. Nevertheless, there is little evidence from cross-cultural and/or cross-country studies of the simultaneous relationship between these psychological variables. The objective of this study was to address this lack of research, examining the associations between emotional intelligence, resilience and perceived stress in a cross-country context. A total sample of 696 undergraduate students from two universities in the United States and the Basque Country (an autonomous community in northern Spain) participated in the study. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the effects of emotional intelligence and resilience that may affect students' perceived stress. The results revealed that emotional intelligence functions as a negative predictor of perceived stress through the mediating variable resilience for the American and Basque students. The findings suggest that university students with better emotional intelligence and resilience present lower perceived stress. Thus, improving emotional intelligence and resilience could prevent students from suffering perceived stress in higher education. Implications and directions for further research are discussed; in particular, it is highlighted that intervention programs that improve both EI and resilience could be helpful in reducing perceived stress.