Abstract
Prior research has investigated parental behavior and students’ motivation separately as predictors of adolescents’ academic achievement. The current study jointly examined the associations between parental behavior, adolescents’ motivation, and academic achievement. Using data collected from participants in youth programs (N = 220), we investigated whether students’ academic goal engagement and disengagement mediates the association between adolescents’ relationships with their parents and their academic achievement. Findings from regression-based mediation models indicated that adolescents’ perceived maternal support was positively associated with their academic achievement, and that this association was mediated by students’ engagement with academic goals. Perceived maternal psychological control was negatively associated with students’ academic success, mediated by students’ academic goal disengagement. Supplementary analyses examining components of perceived parental support and psychological control showed that maternal warmth may be most beneficial for adolescents’ academic success, whereas maternal devaluation may be most detrimental. Perceived paternal psychological control was only associated with lower academic achievement, but was not related to adolescents’ goal disengagement.
Highlights
Hypothesis 1a was tested using a series of regression models that assessed whether the relation between maternal support and academic achievement was mediated by academic goal engagement
Following the four-step approach by Baron and Kenny (1986), the first step showed that maternal support was positively associated with academic achievement (C-path: β = 0.18, p = 0.007)
Results showed that the 95% confidence interval did not contain zero, which indicated that the indirect effect from parental support to academic achievement via academic engagement was significant (Hayes, 2017)
Summary
Many studies have shown that supportive parenting characteristics, including warmth (i.e., expressing love towards the child), involvement (i.e., spending time with the child), and autonomy-support (i.e., guiding the child towards independence), are positively linked to academic success (Pinquart, 2016; Gonida & Cortina, 2014; Froiland & Worrell, 2017; Henry & Plunkett et al, 2011; Topor et al, 2010; Wang et al, 2014; Wang & Sheikh‐Khalil, 2014) Combining these findings, Pinquart (2016) conducted a metaanalysis and showed wide-spread evidence for significant associations between supportive parenting characteristics and adolescents’ academic achievement.
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