School Achievement of Canadian Boys and Girls in Early Adolescence: Links with Personal Attitudes and Parental and Teacher Support for School - October 1998

In this paper, the academic achievement of Canadian youth aged 10 and 11 years is examined from a developmental-contextual perspective. The results indicate that the late elementary school years are, by and large, a positive experience for these youth. They are achieving well in school, feel good about themselves, and believe that their parents and teachers support their academic efforts. Moreover, these positive attitudes all contributed to academic success. Consistent with developmental-contextualism, the fit between individual needs and school environment was particularly good for the girls during this adolescent transition, for whom internalized personal attitudes contributed to their success as well as did the support of adults. Puberty , although associated with a decline in self-esteem and parental support, was not linked to school attitudes and did not moderate the linkages with achievement. The results support the use of developmental-contextualism to integrate our understanding of diverse influences on school achievement during the transition to early adolescence.

4.1 School Achievement and Self, Parent, and Teacher Attitudes

4.1.1 Achievement and Attitudes

We employed two measures of achievement in this study, the scores on an objective mathematics test and teacher ratings of academic skills. Overall, both boys and girls performed well on these measures. Moreover, both boys and girls reported optimistic levels of self-esteem, positive attitudes about school, and support from their parents and teachers for their school efforts. These findings speak well for the general psychological adjustment of Canadian boys and girls as they enter the transition to early adolescence. These factors are all important to adaptation in adult life and these youth appear to be on a generally healthy trajectory toward adulthood.

4.1.2 Attitude-Achievement Linkages

There were clear connections between school achievement and self, parent, and teacher attitudes. For both indices of school achievement, positive associations were found with children's school attitudes, teacher support, parental hopes for school accomplishment and a lack of parental pressure for school success. Clearly, positive psychological attitudes to school play a role in academic success and contribute to children's achievement. Indeed, these effects appear after controlling for such factors as socioeconomic status and country of birth. Consistent with the hypotheses of the study, a positive attitude about ones' school abilities was found to contribute to school success, over and above the contributions of adult support. This suggests that in early adolescence, children have begun to internalize the academic expectations and attitudes toward school to which they are exposed. Their development of their own set of expectations begins to influence their achievement, in addition to the support they obtain from adults. It is likely that there are reciprocal effects between these factors. To the extent that school attitudes contribute to academic achievement, school success likely contributes to positive school attitudes as well as enhancing adults' perceptions.

4.1.3 Puberty and School Achievement

For these 10 and 11 year olds, pubertal development is in its very earliest stages. Roughly half of the sample reported no development of secondary sex characteristics. For the majority of the other children in the study, pubertal development could be described as just barely underway, with changes typically noted in one or two of the secondary sexual characteristics. From the perspective of developmental contextualism, it was anticipated that pubertal maturation would have deleterious effects on children's adjustment and would alter the relationships between school attitudes and school achievement. Consistent with this, a decline in self-esteem was found among youth who had begun pubertal development as well as a decline in their views of the supportiveness of their parents. These findings suggest that puberty does carry with it the potential for generating stress in children's lives and creating distance between children and their parents.

Pubertal development did not have a major influence on academic achievement although some moderate influence on mathematics scores was found, albeit in a somewhat surprising fashion. Youth who showed beginning signs of pubertal development scored higher on the test of mathematics. The expectation, based on previous research was that girls' achievement would show a decline with the onset of puberty. However it must be remembered that pubertal development is only just beginning at this age. These youth are showing early pubertal development and it is possible that this atypical development, vis a vis their peers, is leading to an emphasis on academics rather than social events. Despite the view that early maturation can be problematic and lead to a withdrawal from academic effort, the findings do not support this. The school environment may be critical in this adjustment. The results support the good fit for girls of the late elementary school years and it may be this school context which facilitates the positive adjustment of these early maturing youth.

In contrast to these effects, pubertal development was not associated with school attitude variables. Neither the children's school attitudes nor their perceptions of teacher support in school were influenced by pubertal development. Perhaps the early signs of pubertal growth are less evident to teachers in a school environment than they would be to either the parents or the children themselves. It is possible that the deleterious effects of puberty on self-attitudes will manifest in later years for these youth.

In conducting these analyses, a primary interest was to examine whether the positive link between children's psychological experiences of school and their school achievement might be vulnerable during the transition to early adolescence. A process was hypothesized in which pubertal development is linked to declines in children's personal attitudes toward school which may then be associated with a decline in school achievement. Overall, the results do not provide support for this sequence of events. First, it was not linked to a decline in school achievement. Second, pubertal development was not associated with the self, parent and teacher attitudes which were specifically linked to school achievement. Despite these results, it may be premature to conclude that puberty is not a risk factor for school achievement. Pubertal development is only just beginning in these youth and it is possible that the consequences for school achievement may only be detectable later, when pubertal maturation is fully underway.

4.1.4 Gender and School Achievement

Appreciation of the developmental context of early adolescence also led to the prediction that youths' gender would influence school achievement as well as attitudes toward school. The results of the analyses provided strong support for the view that gender plays a role in school achievement and the factors which influence it, with girls generally benefiting more from the late elementary school years than boys. Despite societal expectations that boys exceed girls on mathematics, the results indicated no differences between the boys and the girls on this measure. Moreover, the girls were rated higher by their teachers on their academic skills than were the boys.

The enhanced school achievement on the part of the girls compared to the boys, was matched by a more positive attitude to school. As well, compared to the boys, the girls felt that their parents were more supportive of their efforts in school and placed fewer academic pressures on them. Finally, compared to the boys, the girls felt that their teachers provided them with more school support. Overall, these findings suggest that during the later years of elementary school, girls experience more support than do boys. In the framework of Eccles and colleagues (1990) there is a better fit between the school ecology of elementary school and girls' educational needs than there is for boys. These findings are consistent with those of others who have examined school success in the elementary school and find that girls generally achieve more than do the boys. The decline in school performance that has been shown to occur for girls may not manifest until this sample of Canadian youth enters the high school environment.

Extending these connections still further, the developmental contextual analyses predicted that the importance of school attitudes in predicting achievement might be differentially related to gender. The results provided support for this. For girls, positive school attitudes were an important explanatory factor in accounting for school achievement independent of adult support, whereas for the boys they were not. For the girls, a confluence of teacher support, parent support and positive school attitudes all contributed to academic success. For the boys, only parent support was an important predictor, with teacher support and personal attitudes playing less significant roles. These results suggest that girls are more likely than the boys to internalize parent and teacher values, developing attitudes which are synchronous with them. For girls, these multiple sources of positive support clearly facilitate academic achievement. Boys on the other hand, seem more dependent on parental support, and less likely to develop independent attitudes that support school. This may make them particularly vulnerable to school problems if parental support were to be diminished in any way. Given that adolescence is most typically accompanied by such distancing between parents and children, boys' difficulties with school may be anticipated.

4.2 Limitations

Three primary limitations of the analyses should be noted. First, analyses involving school achievement variables were conducted on much smaller samples than those analyses not involving measures of school achievement. The conclusions that have been drawn may apply only to those children who have relatively good perceptions of parental pressure, and whose parents have relatively high hopes for their child's education.

Second, the data are cross-sectional rather than longitudinal. It is thus not possible to test causal effects between self-perceptions and school achievement. The correlational tests provide useful insights into these relationships. These analyses will form an essential foundation for examining longitudinal outcomes.

Finally, because of the truncated age range, the inability to detect pubertal effects may be due to a lack of variability across the full range of scores. Too few participants show significant (detectable) pubertal development. Nonetheless, the analyses provide an invaluable baseline from which to conduct future analyses on the continuing development of these children.

4.3 Policy Implications

School achievement is one of the most important factors in building resiliency in children. The costs to society of school failure and truncated academic careers are enormous. It is critical that an understanding is developed of those factors which promote school success. With such factors in mind, schools can create environments which facilitate development and implement methods to detect those children who are most likely to have difficulties and develop interventions which address these specific issues. With these goals in mind, the following issues may be highlighted.

4.3.1 Importance of Positive School Environments

Our analyses suggest that Canadian boys and girls, in the years immediately preceding early adolescence, are faring well in school. These years coincide with the end of elementary school and the results suggest that, by and large, there is a good fit between children's needs and the provisions of the school context at this time. It would be worthwhile to carefully study the academic characteristics of the late elementary school years for factors which create a positive school climate for youth. Several such factors come to mind, including small school size, close contact between teachers and their students, inclusive extra-curricular policies, and ongoing contact between parents and teachers.

4.3.2 Importance of Psychological Attitudes

Our results suggest that schools should be mindful of the psychological context of children's learning. Positive school attitudes, teacher support and positive parental attitudes are associated with school achievement, independent of sociodemographic factors. While intellectual potential and socio-economic factors play a key role in school achievement, psychological factors also have a role to play. Moreover, these psychological factors are among those which are more open to change. Hence, public policy should focus on creating school environments which foster positive attitudes to school, as well as positive family attitudes and strong teacher support. Educational efforts to inform parents and teachers of the importance of these influences in school success should be stressed.

4.3.3 Late Elementary School is a Good Fit for Girls

Our analyses suggest that the late elementary school years are particularly salutary for girls. It is important for schools to recognize the successes of girls at this point in their academic development, to identify those factors which facilitate this, and to provide them with tangible support for continuing their accomplishments. Continuation of these factors into the context of middle school and high school would be important to ensure the continued success of girls.

4.3.4 Boys' Fit with School Needs Work

Conversely, the analyses suggest that boys are benefiting less from what school has to offer than are the girls. Both academic and psychological factors contribute to this and likely do so later in time as well. Efforts to alter this would be very important. Educational efforts directed to parents and teachers of the importance of supportive environments for boys as well as girls are necessary. Efforts need to be directed at increasing boys' internalization of positive school attitudes. Increasing the presence of male teachers in the classroom would be helpful. As well, attention should be paid to the ethnic representation of teachers, as this may also play a role in boys' development of affiliative attachments to their teachers.

4.3.5 Puberty May Affect Adjustment in Future Years

Despite the generally positive picture which emerges from these results, there are harbingers of possible future difficulties for these young adolescents. There is a decline is self-esteem associated with puberty and there is a negative shift in parental attitudes, with increased expectations for school performance. Given the very strong role played by children's school attitudes in accounting for academic success, such findings could indicate potential future difficulties. It is possible that these factors will escalate for these children as they enter the middle school years. Educational planning for the middle school years are particularly important to build the supports that children need to find success. These analyses will provide baseline information about self-perceptions and attitudes in the years immediately preceding the transition. Continued monitoring of these children is essential.