School Climate and Perceived Academic Performance: Direct or Resilience-Mediated Relationship?

Abstract

Although there is a growing interest in identifying the variables that enhance student school adjustment, there is a lack of understanding of the mechanisms involved in it during adolescence. Despite there being works that confirm the positive relationship between school climate and academic performance, it is still unresolved which of the more specific aspects of climate are linked to this performance, as well as the degree to which an individual variable such as resilience can play a mediating role between both; these unknown factors constitute the objective of this study. A total of 731 students (mean age, Mage = 15.20 years; Standard Deviation, SD = 1.62) from the Basque Country participated; they completed the PACE-33 -school climate scale-, the CD-RISC10 -resilience scale- and the EBAE-10 -perceived academic performance subscale-. The full mediation model and the partial mediation model were tested. The results show that the model of choice is that of partial mediation: the resilience mediates the relationship between two specific aspects of the school climate (peer relationship and teachers’ ability to motivate) and perceived academic performance, and a third specific aspect (teachers’ expectations) has a direct relationship with perceived academic performance. These findings highlight the importance of attending to variables specific to the context in which the subject interacts, with the role of the teacher being especially important, in addition to promoting the development of resilience, due to the weight it has on the perception that students have about their school performance.

Future Academic Expectations and Their Relationship with Motivation, Satisfaction of Psychological Needs, Responsibility, and School Social Climate: Gender and Educational Stage

“…In the same manner, in school climate analysis, several pieces of research affirmed that it was mediated by other variables like academic performance and satisfaction in the academic sphere [48,49]. In this line, this investigation was in accordance with those studies, since it included in its results the influence of academic expectations in positive school climate development.…”

Academic Resilience and Engagement in High School Students: The Mediating Role of Perceived Teacher Emotional Support

“…Previous studies on teacher support’s mediating role toward school engagement reported inconsistent results (e.g., [ 60 ]). In contrast, further studies have found that resilience acted as a mediator in the relationship between teachers’ ability to create a good school climate and positive academic outcomes (e.g., [ 61 ]). Thus, and to the best of our knowledge, no previous studies have deepened whether and how students’ perception of contextual resources (i.e., teacher emotional support) could intervene in the link between academic resilience and school engagement.…”

The mediating role of digital informal learning in the relationship between students' digital competence and their academic performance

“…Some studies measured academic performance by students' grade point average or GPA (e.g., Kirschner & Karpinski, 2010;Lau, 2017). Others measured academic performance by students' self-reported data such as students' perception of their ability to learn, perform academic tasks and their overall academic performance (e.g., Chang et al, 2019;El Ansari et al, 2020;Escalante Mateos et al, 2021;Han & Yi, 2019;Martin et al, 2005; Richardson et al, 2005). In this study, academic performance was also measured by students' self-perception using Yu et al's (2010) questionnaire.…”

“…Despite the important result of this study for higher education, several limitations of this study should be acknowledged. In this study, similar to other studies (Aesaert et al, 2017;Chang et al, 2019;El Ansari et al, 2020;Escalante Mateos et al, 2021;Han & Yi, 2019;Martin et al, 2005;Richardson et al, 2005), we used self-reported data for measuring students' digital competence and their academic performance. Aesaert et al (2017) shows that students make accurate judgments about their ability in digital information processing and communication, meaning that the magnitude of students' judgment error of their competencies is not big.…”