Boys’ and Girls’ School Well-Being and the Gender-Specific Role of Social Relationships

• In Event: School Well-Being: Central Determinants and Effects

Abstract

Since classmates and teachers form primary sources of social support in the school context, supportive relationships are crucial for students’ school well-being (Liu et al., 2016). Based on Hascher’s (2012) multi-dimensional model, school well-being implies a cognitive dimension that refers to students’ satisfaction and positive attitude toward school as well as affective and social dimensions including school enjoyment and the absence of negative arousals, physical impairments, or social problems at school. Several studies support the significance of positive relationships with peers and teachers for affective and cognitive dimensions of school well-being (e.g., Lei et al., 2018; Tobia et al., 2019) and indicate reciprocal associations (Schmidt et al., 2019).
However, the current state of research on gender specificity of school well-being and the respective role of social relationships is ambiguous. Generally, school-aged girls report higher subjective well-being and a better attitude toward school while boys indicate fewer worries about school, fewer social problems, and their emotions regarding school seem to be more positive than girls’ emotions (Hascher & Hagenauer, 2018). Only little is known about gender-specific connections between boys’ and girls’ relationships to their teachers and peers with their discrete achievement emotions and attitude toward school.
Following the multi-dimensional understanding of school well-being, we conducted two studies focusing on students’ peer-relationships and teacher-student-relationships as well as gender-specific linkages with a cognitive component (positive attitude toward school) as well as affective dimensions (enjoyment, anxiety, boredom) of students’ school well-being.

In study A, 2224 primary and secondary school students completed a cross-sectional questionnaire. Linear mixed models show that after controlling for school year and class, relationships with teacher and peers are significantly positively related to attitude towards school and enjoyment while being negatively related to anxiety and boredom. Girls experience significantly less enjoyment, but more anxiety and boredom than boys. In contrast, no gender effects could be found for attitude towards school.

In study B, we examined connections between students’ relationships at the beginning of the school year and school well-being at the end of the school year. Therefore, single-level manifest multi-group path models were conducted with longitudinal data of 351 fourth-grade primary school students. Girls perceived higher quality of their teacher-student-relationship but no significant gender difference in perceived student-student-relationships could be found. The relationship with the class teacher – in terms of experienced caring by the teacher – predicted students’ attitudes toward school for both genders positively. Positive linkages to enjoyment and negative effects on boredom were found only for girls, but also a negative effect on boys’ anxiety. As for peer relationships, beneficial connections with positive emotions could be shown for boys only, while negative links with unpleasant emotions occurred solely for girls.

With this pattern of results, we may emphasize the gender-specific nature of school well-being and students’ relationships with classmates and teachers. Teacher relationships could be more influential on dimensions with stronger cognitive elements (attitude, anxiety, boredom), while peer relationships may foster boys’ positive emotions and prevent girls’ negative emotions from emerging through social facilitation.

Authors

• Stefan Markus, University of Wuppertal

• Cornelia Reich, University of Munich

• Maximilian Stark, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich

• Ramona Obermeier, Johannes Kepler University of Linz

• Katrin Lohrmann, University of Munich

• Michaela Gläser-Zikuda, University of Erlangen - Nuremberg