Profiles of adolescents' peer and teacher relatedness: Differences in well-being and academic achievement across latent groups

Highlights

• Few studies have examined students' school adjustment using relatedness profiles.

• Four profiles of relatedness with teacher and peers emerged.

• These profiles varied on well-being and academic achievement.

• Low teacher-student relatedness does not necessarily result in negative outcomes.

• Better understanding of students' profiles who may be at risk is provided.

Abstract

In this study, we identied distinct clusters based on adolescents' relatedness with peers and teachers, and examined how students with different patterns or configurations of school-based relatedness qualities fare in their psychological and academic adjustment. A total of 1964 middle school students (M age = 15 years) participated in the study. We used latent profile analysis to identify meaningful patterns of peer and teacher relatedness and found that low feelings of relatedness with or responsiveness from the teacher do not necessarily result in poor school outcomes (low grades or low well-being) if students have at least moderate feelings of relatedness with their classmates. Results provide a better understanding of profiles of students who may be at risk for poor school adjustment, low grades, or school drop-out while offering a window into potential factors that protect or promote students' well-being and achievement.

Introduction

Adolescents in middle or high school are at a transitional stage of their lives as they prepare for emerging adulthood including college or work life (Wentzel, 2009, Wentzel and Ramani, 2016). Academic institutions are places where adolescents spend significant amounts of time learning with and from peers and teachers (Ellerbrock & Kiefer, 2013). Students who develop supportive school-based relationships are more likely to succeed academically than those who develop short-term or superficial relationships with peers and teachers (Goodenow, 1993). As adolescents transition from elementary to middle school, they need to establish new social bonds with both peers and nonparental adults (Anderman, 2003). But many adolescents find the middle-school learning environment to be a socially challenging developmental niche. Students who feel disconnected from their peers and teachers often become disengaged at school, and are prone to poor psychological functioning and low academic achievement or school drop-out (Zee, Koomen, & Van der Veen, 2013).

Despite a large body of research on school-based social relationships and peer or teacher influences on students' motivation and achievement during early and middle adolescence (Wentzel and Muenks, 2016, Wubbels et al., 2016), prior studies rarely focused on the role of students' relatedness with peers and teachers (simultaneously or jointly) in students' learning and school adjustment (King, 2015). From a Self-Determination perspective, relatedness is the feeling of connection and trust or security from knowing another person is there to back you up if needed (Furrer & Skinner, 2003). Moreover, because students' relatedness depends on the people within the school environment (Ryan & Deci, 2001), relatedness is not a stable individual difference variable but changes as the school environment and the people within it change (La Guardia, Ryan, Couchman, & Deci, 2000). As a result, there may not always be a direct correspondence between students' peer relationships or teacher-student relationships and their school-based outcomes. Rather, different patterns of relatedness with peers and teachers might lead to non-linear relationships between relatedness and school-based outcomes (e.g. Furrer and Skinner, 2003, Kindermann, 2016). For example, some students may feel disconnected from their teacher but feel very close to their peers. Alternatively, some students may feel disconnected from their peers but feel very close to the teacher. Thus, it is important to examine students' relatedness to peers and to teachers simultaneously or jointly and to understand the different profiles or patterns of relatedness amongst students. The present study addresses this gap in the literature by examining students' relatedness with both their peers and teachers and how such patterns or clusters of school-based relatedness predict academic adjustment and psychological health.

Given the many developmental and contextual changes experienced by adolescents as they increasingly seek independence or autonomy from their parents, school-related relationships such as peer or teacher-student relationships become highly influential in adolescents' psychosocial and academic adjustment (Rigby, 2000, Van Ryzin et al., 2009). For instance, in a sample of 13932 preadolescents, Östberg (2003) found that students who were most liked by peers (assessed with sociometry) were rated by their teachers as more happy than students who were less liked by peers (i.e., had lower punctuations on the sociometry). Similarly Holder and Coleman (2008), found that adolescents' feelings of popularity with peers was associated with higher levels of happiness.

Classrooms with students are social environments, and student learning and achievement often happen within and through social practices (Hamre and Pianta, 2010, Wentzel and Watkins, 2002). Indeed, learning and achievement are socially mediated processes, and studies show that students with positive peer relationships at school tend to display greater school engagement and higher academic achievement (Chen et al., 2010, Wentzel, 2009). While positive peer relationships impact students' engagement and achievement at school, teacher-student relationships also have short- and long-term impacts on students' academic and adjustment outcomes. The link between teacher-student relationships and academic achievement has been confirmed by a meta-analysis conducted by Roorda, Koomen, Spilt, and Oort (2011) with 17 secondary school samples showing a correlation of 0.20 between teacher-students relationships and academic grades. Furthermore, students' reports of their quality of relationship with teachers predicted students' psychological well-being, including self-esteem and depression (Liu, Li, Chen, & Qu, 2015).

Although prior studies consistently show that adolescents' social relationships with peers or teachers are influential in achievement and school functioning (e.g., Roorda et al., 2011, Wentzel, 2009), majority of prior studies on social relationships in school has focused on social support with limited attention on relatedness (King, 2015). However, the construct of social support differs from relatedness (Furrer & Skinner, 2003). Social support in school refers to positive relationships that students have with people who offer them aid or assistance in school (Wang & Eccles, 2012). Relatedness, within the Self-Determination Theory framework (Deci and Ryan, 1985, Ryan and Deci, 2000a), is understood as a basic need to establish and maintain positive, meaningful, and enduring relationships (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Thus, students could feel they have social support from teachers or peers who are there to provide instrumental or instructional assistance, but at the same time, could lack a feeling of relatedness with teachers or peers. For students from different socioeonomic, cultural, or linguistic backgrounds than those of the teachers or peers, such a scenario might be particularly likely to happen (e.g., Chiu, Pong, Mori, & Chow, 2012).

The construct of relatedness, or the feeling that one is close and connected to significant others, has roots in the attachment literature (Ainsworth, Blehar, Walters, & Wall, 1978), and it is posited that positive adjustment will flourish in contexts where students feel that they care and are cared for by key school figures such as teachers or peers (Ryan & Deci, 2000b). The construct of relatedness is similar to, but not the same, as the construct of connectedness. Relatedness is conceptualized as one of the basic human needs for well-being (Ryan & Deci, 2000b), while connectedness is often not considered a basic human need but as an important feeling that motivates students to engage in school activities through a sense of school belonging as a valued member of the school community. Researchers have studied relatedness in school settings, measuring students' feeling of trusting and caring relationships at school and the feeling of being accepted, included, and valued by significant individuals at school (e.g., Eccles, 1993, Furrer and Skinner, 2003, Goodenow, 1993, Guay et al., 2008, Ryan and Grolnick, 1986). However, some researchers define relatedness differently. For example, Davidson, Gest, and Welsh (2010) used the term relatedness as a proxy of students' social efficacy to make friends (e.g., social competence), a sociometry to assess students' likeability and teachers' report of students' trust/avoidance of the teacher. This subtle difference in defining and measuring the construct of relatedness as social competence at school rather than as feeling of closeness and connection with significant others at school could potentially lead to differences in research findings.

Students' peer and teacher relatedness are linked to their psychological well-being and psychosocial adjustment. Studies have shown that students who feel that their teacher take a genuine interest in them experience greater well-being (e.g., García-Moya, Brooks, Morgan, & Moreno, 2015). Studies have also found that students who feel that they have teachers who care for them and are willing to back them up display lower levels of depressive symptoms and anxiety when undergoing stressful events (e.g., Pössel et al., 2013, Rueger et al., 2010). In regard to peer relatedness, Guhn, Schonert-Reichl, Gadermann, Hymel, and Hertzman (2012) found that preadolescents' feelings of being backed-up by their peers was related to life satisfaction, self-esteem, and inversely to depression and victimization.

Students' relatedness with teachers has been linked to students' academic achievement. In a longitudinal study with adolescents living in the Philippines, King (2015) found that relatedness with peers at the start of the academic year predicted academic achievement, with this effect mediated by student engagement and disaffection. Importantly, King (2015)’s study examined students' relatedness with peers, teachers, and parents separately and found that relatedness with peers and with parents predicted students' achievement while relatedness with peers and with teachers predicted students' positive affect. Thus, when examining the role of relatedness in the school on student outcomes, it is important to distinguish between relatedness with peers and with teachers because they may have differential associations with student outcomes.

In research on students' relatedness, the vast majority of studies used a variable-centered approach to examine effects of relatedness on well-being or academic achievement. However, one limitation with this approach is that relatedness is treated as a stable individual difference variable without taking into account that differences could exist in students' relatedness with peers and with teachers (Ryan & Deci, 2001). Further, such an approach cannot detect non-linear relationships between students' relatedness with peers or teachers and student outcomes. As a case in point, Furrer and Skinner (2003) studied children from 3rd to 6th grades using cluster analysis and discovered that children with low relatedness with their teachers and high relatedness with peers, as well as those with high relatedness with peers but low relatedness with teachers, exhibited worse academic adjustment than those with high relatedness with both peers and teachers. Thus, it is important to consider not only the degree or level of connection and support that students feel they have at school, but with whom.

To study different profiles or configurations of relatedness, studies that use non-based model approaches, such as cluster analysis, have been used which draw from standard deviations above or below the mean to classify individuals into an arbitrarily number of clusters (Marsh, Lüdtke, Trautwein, & Morin, 2009). To circumvent this problem of arriving at an arbitrary number of clusters, researchers have used latent profile analysis based on the probability that individuals belong to a latent subgroup and statistical criteria is used to determine how many latent subgroups underlie the data (Lanza & Rhoades, 2013). To our knowledge, no studies have used person-centered, non-based model approaches to study children's or adolescents' feelings of connection and trust with school figures: peers and teachers. at school. Of note, Davidson et al. (2010) conducted a study on 5th, 6th and 7th grade students', created clusters based on three variables: peer social preference (using a sociometry to measure if students were choosen as liked least or most by peers), perceived peer competence (self-efficacy to make friends) and teacher-student closeness (teachers' report of students relying on them). Davidson et al. (2010) identified a three teacher-peer relatedness groups of High Relatedness, Peer-Oriented and Low Relatedness and found associations between those profiles and school behaviors and adjustment. However, it is also important to recall that while Davidson et al. (2010) used the term relatedness in their study, their measure was a proxy of students' social efficacy, a sociometry and teachers' report of students trust/avoidance rather than of students' feelings of connection and trust with school figures.

According to Pössel et al. (2013), girls generally perceive higher levels of emotional support in their relationships than boys, and Madill, Gest, and Rodkin (2014) pointed out that girls are more likely than boys to have close relationships with teachers. This is corroborated with findings of gender differences in adolescents' school-based relatedness (Anderman, 2003). Rose and Smith (2009) pointed out that this could be because girls spend more time talking than boys. Furthermore, developmental or age-related differences in school-based relatedness have been found with patterns suggesting that school-based relatedness drops significantly toward the final years of high school (Gillen-O'Neel & Fuligni, 2013). Such declines in school-based relatedness may correspond to developmental changes during adolescence that includes the increased seeking of social support from mentors and adults outside of the family and increased reliance on peer networks and close friendships (Roorda et al., 2011). Developmentally, declines in closeness in adolescents' relationships with their teachers have been found during middle or high school in a number of studies. For example, in a longitudinal study, Anderman (2003) reported a declining sense of relatedness in adolescents from sixth and seventh grade. Goodenow (1993) also found similar declines in the quality of teacher-student relationships from sixth to eight grades. Studies suggest that deterioration in teacher-student relationships may lead to decreased academic motivation and engagement, and subsequent low achievement or school drop-out (Luo et al., 2009, Skinner et al., 2009).

In the study of students' school adjustment, it is important to consider that the definition and measurement of well-being differ depending on theoretical perspectives. Two major approaches that researchers have used include subjective well-being from the hedonic perspective and psychological well-being from the eudemonic perspective (Nelson, Fuller, Choi, & Lyubomirsky, 2014). The hedonic perspective of well-being is focused on the experience of happiness and pleasure (Diener, 1994), but may not necessarily reflect healthy or adaptive functioning (Ryff & Singer, 1998). The eudemonic perspective of well-being is focused on optimal growth and development, and has been posited as an indicator of healthy, congruent, and vital functioning (Ryan & Deci, 2001). In the present study, we focus on psychological well-being as a measure of adolescents' healthy development and adjustment with students' vitality, self-esteem, and life satisfaction as indicators of these key aspects of well-being (Ryan & Deci, 2008). Self-esteem can be understood as a positive or negative orientation toward oneself, which consists of feelings and qualitative judgments (Rosenberg, 1979) and refers to the general sense of personal worth (Harter, 2012). And life satisfaction refers to the overall assessment that an individual makes about her or his own life (Pavot, Diener, Colvin, & Sandvik, 1991), as an overall result of multiple assessments that a person performs on various aspects of her or his life (Shin & Johnson, 1978) and is the most commonly used indicator of well-being (Ferssizidis et al., 2010).

Relatedness clusters could be meaningful and useful in understanding students' social lives in schools, as well as in identifying profiles of students who may be at risk for social-emotional, behavioral, or academic problems in schools. The present study builds on research showing that supportive relationships enhance well-being (Baroody et al., 2014, Guhn et al., 2012, Pössel et al., 2013), and academic achievement (Baroody et al., 2014, Cappella et al., 2013, Furrer and Skinner, 2003, Roorda et al., 2011), and from Davidson et al.’s (2010) findings showing that we can differentiate between distinct patterns based on the degree or level (high vs low) and the type (peers vs teacher) of social support. We hypothesize the existence of different relatedness clusters and that students in higher relatedness clusters will report higher well-being and exhibit higher academic achievement than students in the lower relatedness clusters. But we also explore competing hypotheses for mixed relatedness groups (e.g., high peer and low teacher relatedness). The peers in the present sample spend majority of their time at school together as a cohort, but spend less time with their homeroom teachers. Thus, we expect that students in mixed clusters, characterized by high peer and low teacher relatedness, would still report having positive, meaningful and enduring relationships at school (as met by peers) and would consequently not report low levels of well-being. Alternatively, it is plausible that teacher-student relationships may play such key roles in students' academic adjustment that students in clusters with low teacher relatedness would exhibit lower academic performance regardless of whether they have high or low peer relatedness. Nonetheless, we still hypothesize that students who belong in a cluster with low teacher relatedness would fare better in academic performance if they also have high peer rather than low peer relatedness, because peers could serve as social-emotional and academic support for students despite their low relatedness with teachers. Lastly, studies have found that girls report higher emotional support than boys while relatedness declines across the high school years (e.g., Pössel et al., 2013). Thus, we hypothesize that more girls and younger adolescents will be the higher relatedness groups while more boys and older adolescents will be in the lower relatedness groups.