Adolescents' Longitudinal School Engagement and Burnout Before and During COVID-19-The Role of Socio-Emotional Skills.
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SUBMITTER: Salmela-Aro K
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8646577 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:There is growing evidence in the literature of positive relationships between socio-emotional competencies and school performance. Several hypotheses have been used to explain how these variables may be related to school performance. In this paper, we explored the role of various school adjustment variables in the relationship between interpersonal socio-emotional competencies and school grades, using a weighted network approach. This network approach allowed us to analyze the structure of interrelations between each variable, pointing to both central and mediatory school and socio-emotional variables within the network. Self-reported data from around 3,400 French vocational high school students were examined. This data included a set of interpersonal socio-emotional competencies (cognitive and affective empathy, socio-emotional behaviors and collective orientation), school adjustment measures (adaptation to the institution, school anxiety, self-regulation at school, and self-perceived competence at school) as well as grades in mathematics and French language. The results showed that self-regulation at school weighted the most strongly on the whole network, and was the most important mediatory pathway. More specifically, self-regulation mediated the relationships between interpersonal socio-emotional competencies and school grades.
| S-EPMC8452941 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundTogether at School is a universal intervention program designed to promote socio-emotional skills among primary-school children. It is based on a whole school approach, and implemented in school classes by teachers. The aim of the present study is to examine the short-term effects of the intervention program in improving socio-emotional skills and reducing psychological problems among boys and girls. We also examine whether these effects depend on grade level (Grades 1 to 3) and intervention dosage.MethodsThis cluster randomized controlled trial design included 79 Finnish primary schools (40 intervention and 39 control) with 3 704 children. The outcome measures were the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) and the Multisource Assessment of Social Competence Scale (MASCS) with teachers as raters. The intervention dosage was indicated by the frequencies six central tools were used by the teachers. The data was collected at baseline and 6 months later. Intervention effects were analyzed using multilevel modeling.ResultsWhen analyzed across all grades no intervention effect was observed in improving children's socio-emotional skills or in reducing their psychological problems at 6-month follow-up. Among third (compared to first) graders the intervention decreased psychological problems. Stratified analyses by gender showed that this effect was significant only among boys and that among them the intervention also improved third graders' cooperation skills. Among girls the intervention effects were not moderated by grade. Implementing the intervention with intended intensity (i.e. a high enough dosage) had a significant positive effect on cooperation skills. When analyzed separately among genders, this effect was significant only in girls.ConclusionsThese first, short-term results of the Together at School intervention program did not show any main effects on children's socio-emotional skills or psychological problems. This lack of effects may be due to the relatively short follow-up period given the universal, whole school-based approach of the program. The results suggest that the grade level where the intervention is started might be a factor in the program's effectiveness. Moreover, the results also suggest that for this type of intervention program to be effective, it needs to be delivered with a high enough dosage.Trial registrationClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT02178332 ; Date of registration: 03-April-2014.
| S-EPMC4882817 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BACKGROUND: Immediate bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) significantly improves survival after a sudden cardiopulmonary collapse. This study assessed the basic life support (BLS) knowledge and performance of high school students before and after CPR training. METHODS: This study included 132 teenagers (mean age 14.6 ± 1.4 years). Students completed a two-hour training course that provided theoretical background on sudden cardiac death (SCD) and a hands-on CPR tutorial. They were asked to perform BLS on a manikin to simulate an SCD scenario before the training. Afterwards, participants encountered the same scenario and completed a questionnaire for self-assessment of their pre- and post-training confidence. Four months later, we assessed the knowledge retention rate of the participants with a BLS performance score. RESULTS: Before the training, 29.5% of students performed chest compressions as compared to 99.2% post-training (P < 0.05). At the four-month follow-up, 99% of students still performed correct chest compressions. The overall improvement, assessed by the BLS performance score, was also statistically significant (median of 4 and 10 pre- and post-training, respectively, P < 0.05). After the training, 99.2% stated that they felt confident about performing CPR, as compared to 26.9% (P < 0.05) before the training. CONCLUSIONS: BLS training in high school seems highly effective considering the minimal amount of previous knowledge the students possess. We observed significant improvement and a good retention rate four months after training. Increasing the number of trained students may minimize the reluctance to conduct bystander CPR and increase the number of positive outcomes after sudden cardiopulmonary collapse.
| S-EPMC3353161 | biostudies-other
Project description:Did the dramatic learning losses from remote learning in the context of COVID-19 stem at least partly from schools having overlooked students' socio-emotional skills-such as their ability to self-regulate emotions, their mental models, motivation, and grit-during the emergency transition to remote learning? We study this question using a cluster-randomized control trial with 18,256 high-school students across 87 schools in the State of Goiás, Brazil. The intervention sent behavioral nudges through text messages to students or their caregivers, targeting their socio-emotional skills during remote learning. Here we show that these messages significantly increased standardized test scores relative to the control group, preventing 7.5% of learning losses in math and 24% in Portuguese, consistent with the hypothesis that neglecting students' socio-emotional skills magnified learning losses during the pandemic.
| S-EPMC11003960 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Schools provide a natural context to promote children's mental health. However, there is a need for more evidence-based, high quality school intervention programs combined with an accurate evaluation of their general effectiveness and effectiveness of specific intervention methods. The aim of this paper is to present a study protocol of a cluster randomized controlled trial evaluating the "Together at School" intervention program. The intervention program is designed to promote social-emotional skills and mental health by utilizing whole-school approach and focuses on classroom curriculum, work environment of school staff, and parent-teacher collaboration methods.The evaluation study examines the effects of the intervention on children's socio-emotional skills and mental health in a cluster randomized controlled trial design with 1) an intervention group and 2) an active control group. Altogether 79 primary school participated at baseline. A multi-informant setting involves the children themselves, their parents, and teachers. The primary outcomes are measured using parent and teacher ratings of children's socio-emotional skills and psychological problems measured by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire and the Multisource Assessment of Social Competence Scale. Secondary outcomes for the children include emotional understanding, altruistic behavior, and executive functions (e.g. working memory, planning, and inhibition). Secondary outcomes for the teachers include ratings of e.g. school environment, teaching style and well-being. Secondary outcomes for both teachers and parents include e.g. emotional self-efficacy, child rearing practices, and teacher-parent collaboration. The data was collected at baseline (autumn 2013), 6 months after baseline, and will be collected also 18 months after baseline from the same participants.This study protocol outlines a trial which aims to add to the current state of intervention programs by presenting and studying a contextually developed and carefully tested intervention program which is tailored to fit a national school system. Identification of effective intervention elements to promote children's mental health in early school years is crucial for optimal later development.ClinicalTrials.gov register: NCT02178332.
| S-EPMC4201723 | biostudies-other
Project description:BackgroundTransitioning into adolescence while simultaneously facing greater academic demands as the level of education increases often entails both academic challenges and general declines in students' school-related well-being. Still, however, relatively little is known about the causal relationship between students' academic well-being (i.e., school engagement and burnout) and their performance during the adolescent years.AimsThis study examined longitudinal relations between adolescents' mathematics performance, school engagement and burnout (exhaustion, cynicism and inadequacy) across lower secondary education.SampleData came from a longitudinal research project, following Finnish lower secondary school (grades 7-9) students (N = 1131) over 4 years (2016-2019).MethodsStudents completed standardized mathematics tests and self-report measures of school engagement and burnout at four time points, twice within both 7th and 9th grade. A random intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) was used to examine pathways between engagement, burnout and mathematics performance over time.ResultsHigher mathematics performance increased students' engagement and lowered their exhaustion and cynicism over time, whereas both engagement and exhaustion predicted higher performance. Negative relations were also found from inadequacy and cynicism on students' mathematics performance. Furthermore, school burnout predicted engagement both positively (from exhaustion) and negatively (from cynicism and inadequacy) within and between the school years, whereas engagement only predicted cynicism and inadequacy negatively within 7th grade.ConclusionsFindings suggest that the overall relation between students' mathematics performance, engagement and burnout is rather reciprocal, but also, that the relations become more prominent over time, demonstrating the importance of supporting both learning and well-being in school.
| S-EPMC10087934 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Recent empirical research has shown that improving socio-emotional skills such as grit, conscientiousness and self-control leads to higher academic achievement and better life outcomes. However, both theoretical and empirical works have raised concerns about the reliability of the different methods used to measure socio-emotional skills. We compared the reliability and validity of the three leading measurements methods-a student-reported questionnaire, a teacher-reported questionnaire, and a behavioral task-in a sample of 3997 French students. Before analyzing the data, we polled 114 international researchers in cognitive development and education economics; most researchers in both fields predicted that the behavioral task would be the best method. We found instead that the teacher questionnaire was more predictive of students' behavioral outcomes and of their grade progression, while the behavioral task was the least predictive. This work suggests that researchers may not be using optimal tools to measure socio-emotional skills in children.
| S-EPMC8748826 | biostudies-literature
Project description:In a society where mobility, globalization and contact with people from other cultures have become its distinctive traits, the enhancement of plurilingualism and intercultural understanding should be of the utmost concern. From a positive psychology perspective, agency is the human capacity to affect other people positively or negatively through one's actions. This agentic vision can be related to mediation, a concept rooted in socio-cultural learning theory, where social interaction is considered a fundamental cornerstone in the development of cognition. These social interactions in the language learning setting may be facilitated through musical activities due to their social bonding effect. This paper tries to offer insights into how a music-mediated experience in language learning may develop students' interpersonal and collaborative competences to become active members of a more inclusive society. Mediation, considered to be a paradigm shift in the foreign language classroom and for different out-of-class language learning possibilities, could also provide an environment where learners maximize their emotional intelligence. Our paper focuses on this paradigm shift spearheaded by the Common European Framework for Languages Companion Volume (CEFR/CV) and the considerable repercussions it is bound to have for foreign language didactics, as cooperative tasks become central to foreign language learning. We hypothesize that mediated language learning experiences (MeLLEs) imply a socio-emotional change in learners, focusing on the others, on their needs and interests, by trying to help them understand texts, concepts or facilitating communication with their peers. An intervention with a music-MeLLE was designed and implemented in an L2 classroom of adult learners with divergent backgrounds. A self-assessment scale with mediation descriptors and the socio-emotional expertise scale (SEE) were administered. Results show that students become more mindful of their strengths, and of their capacity for collaboration and teamwork. This leads to more awareness of their mediation skills. Students' mediation skills correlate significantly with their socio-emotional skills - specifically with their expressivity. The implementation of a music-mediated experience also promoted tolerance and enhanced learners' intrinsic motivations for language learning at the same time as acknowledging their diversity.
| S-EPMC6787270 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Experiencing school burnout symptoms can have negative consequences for learning. A growth mindset, the belief that human qualities such as intelligence are malleable, has previously been correlated with fewer school burnout symptoms in late adolescents. This might be because adolescents with a stronger growth mindset show more adaptive self-regulation strategies and thereby increasing resilience against academic setbacks. Here we confirmed in a sample of 426 Dutch young adolescents (11-14 years old; 48% female) that this relationship between growth mindset and school burnout symptoms holds after controlling for other potential predictors of school burnout symptoms such as academic achievement, school track, gender, and socio-economic status. Our second aim was to increase our understanding of the mechanism underlying the relation between mindset and school burnout, by measuring physiological resilience (vagal activity, a measure of parasympathetic activity, also known as heart rate variability or HRV) in a subsample (n = 50). We did not find any relation between vagal activity and growth mindset or school burnout symptoms, nor could we establish a mediating effect of vagal activity in their relation. In conclusion, we found evidence for a potential protective effect of a growth mindset on school burnout symptoms in young adolescents, but not for physiological resilience (vagal activity) as an underlying mechanism. The protective effect of growth mindset as confirmed in our younger sample can be leveraged in interventions to prevent increasing school burnout symptoms.
| S-EPMC10374320 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundAlthough the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the incidence of distress in youth, some children show increased resilience, emphasizing the need to better understand the predictors of distress in youth.ObjectiveThis longitudinal study aimed to assess the combined impact of known socio-emotional predictors of stress-related psychopathology, namely anxiety sensitivity, anxiety trait, intolerance to uncertainty, and rumination, on COVID-related distress in healthy youth.MethodA total of 92 parent-child dyads that previously participated in a laboratory-based experiment assessing observational fear learning in families between 2017 and 2019 (T0) were recontacted. Of them, 84 children aged between 9 and 14 agreed to participate. They completed online questionnaires in June 2020 (T1), September 2020 (T2), December 2020 (T3), and March 2021 (T4). Participants were free of mental illness at T0 and T1. To create a socio-emotional composite score (SECS), we measured anxiety sensitivity (Childhood Anxiety Sensitivity Index) at T0, trait anxiety (Trait subscale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children (STAI-C)), intolerance to uncertainty (Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale for Children), and trait rumination (Children's Response Style Scale) at T1 and created a weighted z-score. To assess symptoms of anxiety, post-traumatic stress (PTS), and depression in reaction to COVID-19, participants completed the State subscale of the STAI-C, the Children's Revised Impact of Event Scale, and the Children's Depression Inventory at T1-T4. Three general linear models were run with sex, age group (9-11 and 12+ years old), and SECS as predictors.ResultsAnalyses revealed a SECS*Time interaction, with higher SECS predicting elevated anxiety symptoms at T1 and T4, and elevated PTS symptoms at T1 and T2.ConclusionThese results suggest that healthy youth endorsing high levels of socio-emotional vulnerability to psychopathology have a higher risk of suffering from anxiety and PTS, but not depressive symptoms, in the year following a major stressor.
| S-EPMC8788367 | biostudies-literature