Abstract
This brief report proposes a model in which academic psychological capital (PsyCap) mediates between the satisfaction of student’s basic psychological needs and their academic performance, as assessed by students’ GPA. Participants were 407 adolescents, aged 12–18, recruited from three Chilean schools. Through structural equation modeling, direct and indirect effects were calculated. Results show that academic PsyCap (assessed at time 2) fully mediates the relationship between the satisfaction of basic psychological needs (assessed at time 1) and academic performance (assessed at time 3). This means that students whose basic psychological needs are satisfied at school experience more hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism (PsyCap), which, in turn, leads to better academic performance. Both theoretical and practical implications of the results are addressed, as well as strengths and weaknesses and directions for future research.
Highlights
The emergence of positive education—focused on both traditional skills and happiness (Seligman et al, 2009)— has made it possible to incorporate some recent constructs embraced in positive psychology into the educational research agenda
This assumption is supported, on the one hand, by research indicating that students tend to show desirable academic outcomes in situations where the social context is more supportive of their autonomy, competence, and relatedness needs (Jang et al, 2016; Orkibi and Ronen, 2017; Wehmeyer and Shogren, 2017) and, on the other hand, by research that identifies academic psychological capital (PsyCap) as a predictor of academic performance (AP) (Datu et al, 2016; Ortega-Maldonado and Salanova, 2017; Carmona–Halty et al, 2018)
We implemented the bootstrapping procedure – with 5000 new samples taken from our sample (Hayes, 2009) in order to: (1) correct for any biasing impact that multivariate non–normality may have had on the computed chi–square value as a function of using maximum likelihood (ML) estimation (Byrne, 2010; Kline, 2011) and (2) examine direct and indirect effects that were considered statistically significant if the 95% confidence interval estimates did not contain the value of zero
Summary
The emergence of positive education—focused on both traditional skills and happiness (Seligman et al, 2009)— has made it possible to incorporate some recent constructs embraced in positive psychology into the educational research agenda. If students’ needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence are met at school, their hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism about learning activities will increase, and, they will perform better This assumption is supported, on the one hand, by research indicating that students tend to show desirable academic outcomes in situations where the social context is more supportive of their autonomy, competence, and relatedness needs (Jang et al, 2016; Orkibi and Ronen, 2017; Wehmeyer and Shogren, 2017) and, on the other hand, by research that identifies academic PsyCap as a predictor of AP (Datu et al, 2016; Ortega-Maldonado and Salanova, 2017; Carmona–Halty et al, 2018)
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