Poster #83 - Teacher Autonomy support, Grit and Socioemotional Adjustment between School Mobility and Non-mobility Chinese Adolescents

• In Event: 1-115 - Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Section - Education, Schooling

Integrative Statement

Introduction: With China’s rapidly developing economy, the popularity of school choice for adolescence and parental migration lead to adolescents’ school mobility in urban China. Previous research has shown that school mobility is associated with a high rate of dropout and low academic achievement (Gasper, DeLuca, & Estacion, 2012; Mehana & Reynolds, 2004). Yet, little is known about their socioemotional adjustment from a collectivistic perspective (e.g., China) where social relationships and high academic performance are highly emphasized. Due to school mobility, both aspects would be a disadvantage to some extent (Dupere et al., 2015). Thus, to identify the potential protective factors is necessary for developing a targeted intervention program. Given the majority of time adolescents spent in a context of school, we would focus on teacher-student link. Although it was well-established that autonomy support positively contributes to adolescents’ adjustment, some theorists argued the adaptability of autonomy support for Eastern society (Chirkov, Ryan, Kim, & Kaplan, 2003). Also, following recent research, grit involving perseverance and passion for long-term goals has been found to buffer against adverse circumstances in at-risk populations (e.g., Blalock, Young, & Kleiman, 2015; White et al., 2017). However, the extent to which perceived teacher autonomy support (TAS) might interact with grit to explain both positive and negative socioemotional outcomes among school mobility adolescents is still unknown, especially within the Eastern cultural contexts.

Aims: The current study aimed to 1) compare three aspects of socioemotional adjustment (i.e., problem behavior, positive affect, negative affect) between school mobility Chinese adolescents and their non-mobility peers, and 2) test whether the expected relationship between TAS and socioemotional adjustment is moderated by grit in the two groups.

Methods: A propensity score matching was used to balance the two groups concerning age, gender, socioeconomic status, family structure and function, with a ratio of 1 to 2. Participants were 371 national school mobility and 742 non-mobility (60.1% girls) Chinese adolescents aged 13–18 years, who completed a questionnaire survey including Learning Climate Questionnaire (LCQ; Black & Deci, 2000), Grit Scale (Duckworth & Quinn, 2009) and Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Achenbach, 1991), Positive Affect and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS; Bradburn, 1970). All the measures were checked to be validated in a Chinese context.

Findings: Results showed that 1) adolescents from mobility group reported more problem behavior and negative affect than their peers; 2) In path analyses (see Figure 1), TAS and grit were positively related with positive affect and negatively associated with problem behavior and negative affect. Of interest, grit moderated the association between TAS and negative affect in mobility group. Specifically, gritty adolescents from mobility group were reported less negative affect than their non-gritty peers when TAS was high (see Figure 2).

Conclusions: Our findings suggested that school mobility in a collectivistic society would be a disadvantage for adolescents’ socioemotional adjustment. Chinese adolescents will benefit from TAS and self-regulatory skills (i.e., grit). Of importance, gritty individuals from mobility group are capable of coping successfully with difficulties.

Authors

• Rendy Radin, University of Padova
  Non-Presenting Author

• Xiaoyu Lan, University of Padova
  Presenting Author