The interplay of perceived stress, self-determination and school engagement in adolescence

Abstract

Currently, many societies are placing a greater onus on academic achievement–resulting in higher levels of stress being observed among adolescent students. Stress can have detrimental repercussions on adolescents’ health and is also associated with anxiety and depression. However, since less is known about how high stress levels affect school engagement, this study examined the interplay of perceived stress and school engagement in a large sample of seventh and eighth grade students (N = 1088; MAge = 13.7) in secondary schools in Brandenburg, Germany. Based on self-determination theory (SDT), this study also examined if perceived autonomy, relatedness, and competence mediated the association between stress and school engagement in order to identify possible strategies for intervention and prevention. Latent structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test for the associations between stress, self-determination, and school engagement. Results showed that self-determination acted as a full mediator in the negative association between stress and school engagement. These results suggest that supporting students’ basic psychological needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence could be an effective starting point for prevention and intervention of stress and its negative association with school engagement. Consequently, SDT has strong implications for both school psychologists as well as teachers.

Understanding and Supporting Adolescents’ Mental Toughness in an Education Context

“…Some students articulated a clear link between stress and the anxieties arising from not meeting academic targets (e.g., “It's more anxiety people get when they start failing tests in class and their teacher tells them that they need to do better, that can cause stress and students can crumble under it.” FG5). Previous research focusing on stress in academic settings has revealed that stress is detrimental to academic performance (e.g., Kaplan, Liu, & Kaplan, ), school engagement (e.g., Raufelder et al., ), and is related to intentions to drop out (Eicher, Staerkle, & Clemence, ). Consistent with the beliefs of students in the current study, previous research has also revealed that older students report more subjective academic stress, due to the increasing demands of school, including the time spent on homework (Brown, Nobiling, Teufel, & Birch, ), and a need to secure future careers and job opportunities (de Anda et al., ).…”

Severity of pediatric pain in relation to school-related functioning and teacher support: An epidemiological study among school-aged children and adolescents

“…Specifically, as shown in Table 3 The current study examined whether child and adolescent pain severity relates to poorer school functioning and, in line with self-determination theory [12,40,44,46], the potentially protective role of perceived teacher support of child/adolescent autonomy and competence. Data for the present study were obtained from a large representative sample of Flemish speaking school children and adolescents whose pain severity was graded using a classification system for pediatric pain adapted from that of Von Korff et al [63].…”

“…Mean age was 14.33 years (SD=2. 44). Approximately 15% of the children and adolescents were recruited from the fifth grade, 11% from the sixth grade, 15% from the seventh grade, 13% from the eighth grade, 12% from the ninth grade, 13% from the tenth grade, 13% from the eleventh grade and 9% from the twelfth grade.…”

Health Effects of Instruction Intensity: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in German High-Schools

“…Elias (1989) provides a review of early psychological studies on mental health of students and concludes that stress in school is a key factor detrimental to students mental health -a relation also found in more recent studies (Raufelder et al, 2013;Scrimin et al, 2016).…”