Investigating the interplay of student-teacher relationships, general anxiety, and school adjustment among Italian primary school children

Abstract

ABSTRACT School adjustment is an important factor in children’s, and research attributes an important role to the quality of the teacher-student relationship in predicting more favourable school adjustment. The purpose of this study is to expand our knowledge of the relationship between teacher-student relationship quality and school adjustment (academic achievement, peer social preference, and problem behaviour) by examining the possible mediating role of general anxiety. We recruited a sample of 1135 Italian primary school students (51.6% girls, aged 6 ~ 10 years, M = 7.7; SD = 0.99) and their teachers who completed an anonymous questionnaire. Results showed that a close teacher-student relationship was significantly and negatively associated with problem behaviours and positively associated with peer social status and academic achievement. Conversely, our data showed that a high-conflict teacher-student relationship was significantly and positively associated with problematic behaviours and negatively associated with peer academic achievement and social status. Our data also suggested a mediating role of general anxiety in explaining the association between a conflictual relationship with the teacher and measures of academic achievement. In this sense, a high-conflict relationship tends to be associated with high levels of general anxiety, which in turn is associated with more in problematic behaviour and worse peer social status and academic achievement.