Relationships at school and stage-environment fit as resources for adolescent engagement and achievement

Abstract

Guided by Self-Determination and associated theories, we examined whether adolescent ( N = 324 , M age = 15 , 52% female) competence (academic engagement and achievement) were supported by relationships at school and school fit. Aspects of relationships and school fit that were measured included adolescents’ perceptions of each context as promoting autonomy, relatedness and competence. Within a latent-variable structural equation model, direct and indirect path estimates, standard errors and confidence intervals were produced using maximum likelihood and bootstrapping. Results supported the hypothesized model. As predicted, school fit partially mediated the association between teacher–student relationships and engagement, but fully mediated the association between peer relationships and engagement. Engagement fully mediated the path from school fit to achievement. The use of SEM and bootstrapping are encouraged as the combination of these techniques can increase power to detect direct and indirect effects, and can be a better choice for data that do not conform to normal theory assumptions. Overall, these techniques allowed for more firm conclusions about the importance of a hierarchy of multidimensional contextual experiences for adolescent competence.