Nurturing Growth
Adolescence is one of the most formative periods of human development, a stage wherein many long-term habits and lifestyles are developed. It is marked by significant physical, cognitive, and socio-emotional changes.[1] Hellström & Beckman (2021) explain how understanding the needs and special challenges of this stage of life will bring about great benefits for solving and preventing unique problems in society.[2] As the majority of changes in adolescence come about through a combination of social, hormonal, cognitive circumstances (most of which occur in the environment of middle-high schools) Verhoeven et al. (2019) note this is an ideal time period to examine when looking for answers for questions about brain-behavior development.[3]
As we increasingly concern ourselves with improving child educational environments and outcomes, Zhao et al. (2021) note that one of the biggest risk factors for adolescents’ academic motivation and achievement is the environment in their academic setting.[4] As Wang et al. found in 2020, positive classroom climate has been essential to many school reform efforts hoping to promote youth’s academic and psychological well-being.[5] Especially, the role of teacher support as a moderator for academic achievements among various types of learner is highlighted in importance. Supportive student-teacher relationships can help improve students’ self-schema and sense of belonging, and therefore enable them to productively achieve their personal goals.[6] So, how can we best support students and provide significant developmental opportunities?
Adolescent Social Support
Farmer & Farmer (1996) explain how social support is the “processes of social exchange that contribute to the development of individuals’ behavioral patterns, social cognitions, and values”.[7] Hogan et al. (2002) have theorized two forms of social support, natural and formal, in which a natural social support network would consist of family and friends, while formal networks would include health professionals, religious or other social communities.[8] Specifically within an academic setting, social support refers to the perception of belonging and feeling cared for within a support network of peers and teachers.[9]
Perceived social support includes an individual's feeling of the availability and adequacy of support from their social network. Further, perceived social support is dependent on how individuals gauge the amount of emotional, informational, or tangible assistance they receive from their community.[10] Feeling a sense of social support is critical for promoting positive social, psychological, academic outcomes for students, and especially during adolescence with multiple transitions happening at once.[11] In an academic setting, where adolescents tend to spend much of their time (learning, socializing) this sense of perceived social support is especially important to find and be encouraged. According to Allen and Gregory (2018), social support is a significant buffer against negative experiences in life and stressors in the school environment, thus crucial in helping students cope with challenges, fostering a positive school climate, and ultimately promoting their academic and emotional well-being.[12] Danielsen et al. (2008) suggested that indirect support from teachers, classmates and parents can lead to student life satisfaction, and school-related support from teachers, classmates, parents have a direct effect on school satisfaction and scholastic competence in students.[13]
Similar to social support, teacher’s confirmation positively predicts and has a noticeable influence on students’ emotional outcome. When teachers engage more, students seem less likely to exert unnecessary emotional efforts in the classroom; in contrast, if teachers display less or no interest or engagement in the classroom, students have a greater likelihood to expend emotional work, which bodes negatively for students achievement, motivation and other learning outcomes.[14] Specifically, emotion work is draining for students as it describes the extent to which students must expend emotional energy and perform emotional labor (i.e., faking or feigning emotions). In the context of the classroom, this can mean suppressing authentic emotions (e.g., anger, frustration, boredom) and displaying more socially acceptable ones.[15] Similarly, Spera (2005) found that parent support provides adolescents with a positive learning environment and instills a sense of responsibility and motivation. Peers can also provide emotional support, help with academic tasks, and serve as role models for positive behavior and achievement.[16]
However, there are multiple factors that mediate or moderate perceived social support and its outcomes in an academic environment beyond the student-teacher interactions; such factors include:
Self-Esteem - Lau et al. (2018) conducted a study on the link between self-esteem and social support in first-year university students in Hong Kong and discovered that positive adjustments during the transition to college life increase when self-esteem is supported by peer and family social support. In particular, it offers a sense of security and represents an individual's importance to their social circle, in turn improving their self-esteem. Moreover, students with higher self-esteem may have higher aspirations and more resilience than those with lower self-esteem, therefore contributing to differing adjustment abilities.[17] These findings support those by Roman et al. in 2008, who found that self-esteem is positively correlated with effort and deep processing, which is the encoding of information in a meaningful and elaborate manner, facilitating long-term retention and retrieval. Vice versa, self-esteem is negatively related to shallow processing. It also has the strongest indirect positive effect on academic achievement through deep processing and effort.[18]
Personality Traits - Personality traits play a significant role in shaping individuals' perceptions and experiences within their social environments.[19,20] A commonly used construct for analysis is the Big Five model of personality. The Big Five personality traits, (i.e., the five-factor model of personality) is a suggested personality taxonomy for personality traits developed in 1992 which postulates that there are five universal dimensions: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience.[21] According to Swickert (2009), various personality dimensions are related to social support, including all of the Big Five personality traits. For example, agreeableness and extraversion seem to be most strongly positively correlated, while neuroticism (anger, irritability, self-doubt) has a strong negative correlation, with the perceived availability of social support.[22] Those with higher life satisfaction are also more extraverted, more sociable and more likely to experience pleasant moods.[23,24]
Educational Goals - Hernandez et al. (2016) found that while social support has a positive and direct effect on academic performance, its influence also depends on the manner with which they treat this social support, like their personal goals and representation of this support.[25] In adolescents who mainly pursue social goals and neglect academic achievements, social support can influence inattention and lack of class participation. Additionally, social support predicts students’ investment and interest in work and success, but only if they are pursuing academic achievement.[26] This means that students’ effort in their school performance is in fact motivated by what they expect to get out of school, and attaching values to school for its emotional and relational opportunities detach students from academic expectations and demands. Therefore, in this way, social support can actually hinder them from achieving academic success. It is also important to note that elementary students report higher academic engagement and more social support from both family and school faculty than junior high school students.[27] It is therefore important that researchers and educators focus on the pleasures and importance of gaining knowledge throughout adolescence in order to redirect students’ motivation and achievement efforts in educational settings.
Socioeconomic Status (SES) - Regarding the relationship between SES and academic achievements, Malecki & Demaray (2006) found that adolescents with lower SES tend to have corresponding lower GPA than those with higher SES.[28] However as a mitigating factor, students with lower SES have a significant positive relationship between GPA and social support - especially the social support of teacher.[29] To support this finding, a study conducted on low-income students by Wen & Li (2022) concluded that despite additional difficulties and risk factors these students face, higher levels of social support improved their academic performance by increasing dispositional optimism, which reflects positive perception of disadvantaged situations and the tendency to expect positive outcomes.[30] This “learned hopefulness” therefore underlines that individuals with higher perceived social support have more positive self-perceptions, including positive evaluations of their environment and more optimistic expectations of success.[31]
Negative effects of negating social support
Even though there has been limited research done on the direct influence of the lack of social support and academic achievements in adolescents, studies have been conducted that may clue us into the nature of this relationship. For instance, Orban et al. (2020) studied the effects of social deprivation on adolescents’ development through the animal model of adolescent rodents.[32] They discovered that at the behavioral level, even a short period of isolation (e.g., 24 hours) in adolescent rodents can lead to heightened anxiety, increased hyperactivity, and a heightened sensitivity to social rewards, which extends to seeking food or drug rewards, making them more susceptible to developing addictions. Rodents that are chronically isolated throughout their entire adolescent period display abnormal behaviors such as hyper-reactivity to stressful situations and increased aggression. Moreover, isolation-induced changes also affect cognitive processes, such as learning and attention, resulting in reduced performance on tasks involving these processes. Specifically, isolation during adolescence leads to deficits in cognitive flexibility, impairing reward learning, reversal learning, and attention shifting.[33] Even though these results do not replicate exactly to human adolescents, they still inform us of the possible consequences of social isolation in adolescents’ mental wellbeing and cognitive development, which both influence their academic outcomes.[34]
On a less extreme level of social support deprivation, findings from an experimental study on adult humans by Tomova et al. (2022) also suggest that social isolation results in increased feelings of loneliness, craving for social contact, and decreased happiness.[35] This is further supported by Glozah and Pevalin in 2014, who found that teenagers experiencing low psychological and physical wellbeing tend to resort to unhealthy coping mechanisms, such as absenteeism, truancy, and a general lack of motivation towards their studies.[36] Additionally, compromised health and psychological well being can contribute to attention issues, subsequently affecting academic performance and making it challenging for students to cope with academic pressures.[37]
Considering these findings, it is possible that without a strong network of social support in school, adolescents may be negatively affected not only academically, but also in terms of cognitive development and mental well-being. Given the current gap in knowledge, however, further studies on the potential effects of social support deprivation in adolescents are imperative.
Potential interventions
It is thus crucial for us as individuals and institutions to focus on creating an academic space in which social support is optimally available to adolescents.
In 2007, the World Health Organization (WHO) listed efforts that have been implemented globally to improve social support and help-seeking behaviors in adolescents in an international literature review and program consultation.[38] Some schools have reported a strategy for improving students’ health and attracting them to existing services by experimenting with making local services more “adolescent-friendly” by offering more suitable hours and hiring training staff in adolescent-specific needs.[39] Another way of offering more convenience for adolescents is by locating/relocating health services to attract them, such as building more school-based health clinics. In addition to this, some countries offer adult outreach or community health promoters, who have been employed to bring health services and information to adolescents at home or at school.[40] However, they point out that in already overburdened public education systems, it can be difficult to aid adolescents’ use of public health resources.[41]
The report also noted the use of peer promoters, which includes the training and supervising of adolescents or young adults to introduce health-related information to their peers to promote help-seeking.[42] Dougherty & Sharkey (2017) has also provided literature in favor of these peer programs and peer support groups for those with specific health needs, such as substance use or violence.[43] Along this line, information campaigns, hotlines and information centers have also long been carried out to increase awareness on support resources for adolescents and can provide youth with information on existing local resources, services, job training, and recreational activities.[44]
In several countries, service integration also exists, which is the formal or informal networks among existing services, as a strategy for promoting help-seeking by adolescents with the goal of casting a broader net for social support.[45] However, this service is often built upon the premise that infrastructure exists and can be integrated to increase access. The underlying framework is that through collaboration, this social support network can become larger than the sum of its parts, thus in theory more effective.[46]
In support of this, a study conducted by Lee et al. (1999) in Chicago found that when seeking to improve students’ academic performance, school systems should not ignore social support as a pertinent factor that contributes to students' success.[47] For those who may receive especially little support from their local community, peers, and at home, it is even more important that school staff create academic environments that are supportive for learning. Similarly, looking to improve students’ achievements by fostering supportive environments alone is insufficient. The report found that without academic press in school, social support alone may not lead to meaningful improvements in academic performance.[48]
Specifically for social support, some schools within the Chicago Annenberg Research Project have created smaller, more personalized classrooms (e.g., school-within-schools, teachers teaching the same cohort for multiple grades, supplemental one-on-one tutoring with teacher assistants). Some schools provide teachers with professional development opportunities to encourage supportive relationships with students, others strengthen support through parent education programs, engaging parents in classroom activities and one-on-one student mentorships. Several schools have given students the opportunities to develop relationships with local community members who can support and guide them as role models, or increase peer relationships through extracurricular activities.[49]
For academic purposes, schools have turned to communicating high learning expectations and clear responsibilities for students. This has also been accomplished by professional development for teachers aiming at improving quality of instruction and guiding students towards more challenging work and critical thinking. Some schools have developed incentive systems to reward students for high academic achievements or student assessments that have a double-pronged purpose: student-teacher accountability and the teacher’s own examination of their teaching style for improvements.[50]
While these options can offer increased social support for students, they do not come without substantial challenges and school systems may not have the time and resources currently available to enact these changes.[51,52]
Therefore, more research should be done to bring awareness to these approaches and develop more easily applicable and less costly methodologies. The WHO notes that these efforts, whether it be research or application, should also involve meaningful participation of adolescents, as junior researchers.[53,54] As the Kellogg Foundation cited in 1998, some of the key needs when it comes to initiatives promoting support-seeking from adolescents include the need to:[55]
Identify service barriers
Have detailed written agreements and plans to services
Consider culturally appropriate models of support
Work with existing community resources.
Through increased awareness and opportunities, social support within school environments can help adolescents’ mental health and educational opportunities.
If you or your loved ones are looking for ways to provide additional support for your child, or if they seem to be struggling in school, please reach out to a licensed mental health professional (e.g., a psychotherapist, psychologist or psychiatrist) for guidance.
Contributed by: Mai Tran
Editor: Jennifer (Ghahari) Smith, Ph.D.
References
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2 Hellström L, Beckman L. Life Challenges and Barriers to Help Seeking: Adolescents' and Young Adults' Voices of Mental Health. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Dec 12;18(24):13101. doi: 10.3390/ijerph182413101. PMID: 34948711; PMCID: PMC8700979.
3 Verhoeven, M., Poorthuis, A.M.G. & Volman, M. The Role of School in Adolescents’ Identity Development. A Literature Review. Educ Psychol Rev 31, 35–63 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-018-9457-3
4 Zhao, K., Chen, N., Liu, G., Lun, Z., & Wang, X. (2023). School climate and left-behind children’s achievement motivation: The mediating role of learning adaptability and the moderating role of teacher support. Frontiers in Psychology, 14. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1040214
5 Wang, M.-T., L. Degol, J., Amemiya, J., Parr, A., & Guo, J. (2020). Classroom climate and children’s academic and psychological wellbeing: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Developmental Review, 57, 100912. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2020.100912
6 Zhao et al. (2023)
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12 Allen, J. P., & Gregory, A. (2018). Social support as a buffer for perceived racial discrimination stress among African American youth. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 28(4), 1015-1030. doi:10.1111/jora.12385
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14 Goldman, Z. W., & Goodboy, A. K. (2014). Making students feel better: Examining the relationships between teacher confirmation and college students' emotional outcomes. Communication Education, 63(3), 259–277. https://doi.org/10.1080/03634523.2014.920091
15 Titsworth, S., Quinlan, M. M., & Mazer, J. P. (2010). Emotion in teaching and learning: Development and validation of the Classroom Emotions Scale. Communication Education, 59, 431–452. doi:10.1080/03634521003746156
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17 Lau, E.Y.H., Chan, K.K.S., & Lam, C.B. (2018). Social Support and Adjustment Outcomes of First-Year University Students in Hong Kong: Self-Esteem as a Mediator. Journal of College Student Development 59(1), 129-134. doi:10.1353/csd.2018.0011.
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25 Hernandez, L., Oubrayrie-Roussel, N. & Prêteur, Y. Educational goals and motives as possible mediators in the relationship between social support and academic achievement. Eur J Psychol Educ 31, 193–207 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-015-0252-y
26 Ibid.
27 Rueger SY, Malecki CK, Demaray MK. Relationship between multiple sources of perceived social support and psychological and academic adjustment in early adolescence: comparisons across gender. J Youth Adolesc. 2010 Jan;39(1):47-61. doi: 10.1007/s10964-008-9368-6. Epub 2008 Dec 9. PMID: 20091216.
28 Malecki, C. K., & Demaray, M. K. (2006). Social support as a buffer in the relationship between socioeconomic status and academic performance. School Psychology Quarterly, 21(4), 375–395. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0084129
29 Ibid.
30 Wen, X., & Li, Z. (2022). Impact of Social Support Ecosystem on Academic Performance of Children From Low-Income Families: A Moderated Mediation Model. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.710441
31 Ibid.
32 Orben A, Tomova L, Blakemore SJ. The effects of social deprivation on adolescent development and mental health. Lancet Child Adolesc Health. 2020 Aug;4(8):634-640. doi: 10.1016/S2352-4642(20)30186-3. Epub 2020 Jun 12. PMID: 32540024; PMCID: PMC7292584.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid.
35 Tomova L, Wang KL, Thompson T, Matthews GA, Takahashi A, Tye KM, Saxe R. Acute social isolation evokes midbrain craving responses similar to hunger. Nat Neurosci. 2020 Dec;23(12):1597-1605. doi: 10.1038/s41593-020-00742-z. Epub 2020 Nov 23. Erratum in: Nat Neurosci. 2022 Mar;25(3):399. PMID: 33230328; PMCID: PMC8580014.
36 Glozah, F. N., & Pevalin, D. J. (2014). Social support, stress, health, and academic success in Ghanaian adolescents: A path analysis. Journal of Adolescence, 37(4), 451–460. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2014.03.010
37 Barriga, A., Doran, J., Newell, S., Morrison, E., Barbetti, V., & Robbins, B. (2002). Relationships Between Problem Behaviors and Academic Achievement in AdolescentsThe Unique Role of Attention Problems. Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders - J EMOTIONAL BEHAV DISORD, 10, 233–240. https://doi.org/10.1177/10634266020100040501
38 Barker, Gary. (2007). Adolescents, social support and help-seeking behaviour : an international literature review and programme consultation with recommendations for action / Gary Barker. World Health Organization. https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/43778
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.
43 Dougherty, D., & Sharkey, J. (2017). Reconnecting Youth: Promoting emotional competence and social support to improve academic achievement. Children and Youth Services Review, 74, 28–34. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2017.01.021
44 Barker (2007)
45 Ibid.
46 Costello J, Pickens L & Fenton J (2001). Social supports for children and families: A matter of connections.Chicago, Chapin Hall Centre for Children at the University of Chicago (Draft manuscript).
47 Lee, V. E., Smith, J. B., Perry, T. E., & Smylie, M. A. (1999). Social Support, Academic Press, and Student Achievement: A View from the Middle Grades in Chicago. Improving Chicago’s Schools. A Report of the Chicago Annenberg Research Project. Consortium on Chicago School Research, 1313 E. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED439213
48 Ibid.
49 Ibid.
50 Ibid.
51 Griffith, M. (2018). What is the cost of providing students with adequate psychological support. National Association of School Psychologists (NASP). https://www.nasponline.org/research-and-policy/policy-matters-blog/what-is-the-cost-of-providing-students-with-adequate-psychological-support
52 Barker (2007)
53 Ibid.
54 Bauer, A., Stevens, M., Purtscheller, D., Knapp, M., Fonagy, P., Evans-Lacko, S., & Paul, J. (2021). Mobilising social support to improve mental health for children and adolescents: A systematic review using principles of realist synthesis. PLOS ONE, 16(5). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0251750
55 Kellogg Foundation (1998). Safe Passages through Adolescence: Communities Protecting the Health and Hopes of Youth. In Lessons Learned from WK Kellogg Foundation Programming. Battle Creek,MI, USA.
