Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T12:33:24.414Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

School Performance Paths: Personal and Contextual Factors Related to Top Performers and Low Achievers in Portugal and Spain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2018

Celeste Simões Open the ORCID record for Celeste Simões [Opens in a new window] ,
Francisco Rivera ,
Carmen Moreno  and
Margarida Gaspar de Matos
Celeste Simões*
Affiliation:
Universidade de Lisboa (Portugal)
Francisco Rivera
Affiliation:
Universidad de Sevilla (Spain)
Carmen Moreno
Affiliation:
Universidad de Sevilla (Spain)
Margarida Gaspar de Matos
Affiliation:
Universidade de Lisboa (Portugal)
*
*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Celeste Simões. Universidade de Lisboa. Faculdade de Morticidade Humana. Lisboa (Portugal). E-mail: [email protected] - [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

School performance is a critical aspect of adolescents’ lives. Several factors have an impact on school performance. The aim of this study is to analyze the relevant personal and contextual variables associated with top performance and low achievement in a sample of Portuguese and Spanish adolescent students. The sample included 1,564 adolescents, mean age 14 years old, and was collected from the HBSC (Health Behavior in School-aged Children) survey. The questions in this study covered sociodemographic, health and wellbeing, health-related behaviors, family, school and peers. Results show that students with low performance more frequently have worse social-contextual and personal/health-related indicators, while the opposite is the case for top performers. Student-teacher relationships appeared as the most influential variable on school performance paths, χ2(2) = 328.11, p < .001; but other variables within families, e.g. mother studies, χ2(2) = 50.54, p < .001, and schools, e.g. liking the school, χ2(1) = 16.27, p < .001 and χ2(1) = 22.54, p < .01 (in the low and high student-teacher relationship branches of the decision tree, respectively), as well as some health and wellbeing variables, e.g. health related-quality of life, χ2(2) = 53.58, p < .001, and χ2(2) = 63.86, < .001 (in the low and high student-teacher relationship branches, respectively), appeared significant in the paths.

Keywords

health-related behaviorsschool performancestudent-teacher relationshipstudents well-being
Type
Research Article
Information
The Spanish Journal of Psychology , Volume 21 , 2018 , E36
Copyright
Copyright © Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos de Madrid 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The authors thank to the HBSC Portuguese and Spanish teams, for their fieldwork, collecting data. Likewise, the authors thank to the Portuguese Health Authority - Health Ministry and to the Spanish Ministerio de Salud, Asuntos Sociales e Igualdad, for funding this study in Portugal and Spain, respectively. The authors would like also to thank Harry Ballan for the important inputs and the final English writing revision.

References

Anderson, A. L. (2013). Adolescent time use, companionship, and the relationship with development. In Gibson, C. L. & Krohn, M. D. (Eds.), Handbook of life-course criminology: Emerging trends and directions for future research (pp. 111–127). New York, NY: Springer New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyce, W., Torsheim, T., Currie, C., & Zambon, A. (2006). The family affluence scale as a measure of national wealth: Validation of an adolescent self-report measure. Social Indicators Research, 78(3), 473–487. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-005-1607-6CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bradley, B. J., & Greene, A. C. (2013). Do health and education agencies in the United States share responsibility for academic achievement and health? A review of 25 years of evidence about the relationship of adolescents’ academic achievement and health behaviors. Journal of Adolescent Health, 52(5), 523–532. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2013.01.008CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carbonaro, W., & Workman, J. (2016). Intermediate peer contexts and educational outcomes: Do the friends of students’ friends matter? Social Science Research, 58, 184–197. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2016.02.005CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chau, K., Kabuth, B., Causin-Brice, O., Delacour, Y., Richoux-Picard, C., Verdin, M., ... Chau, N. (2016). Associations between school difficulties and health-related problems and risky behaviours in early adolescence: A cross-sectional study in middle-school adolescents in France. Psychiatry Research, 244, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2016.07.008Google Scholar
Currie, C., Smith, R., Boyce, W., & Smith, R. (2001). HBSC, a WHO cross national study: Research protocol for the 2001/2002 survey. Copenhagen, Denmark: WHO.Google Scholar
Danielsen, A. G., Wiium, N., Wilhelmsen, B. U., & Wold, B. (2010). Perceived support provided by teachers and classmates and students’ self-reported academic initiative. Journal of School Psychology, 48(3), 247–267. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2010.02.002CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ercan, O., Erginoz, E., Alikasifoglu, M., Uysal, O., Yurtseven, E., & Fiscina, B. (2017). Connections? Peer support, liking school, and schoolwork pressure. Journal of Adolescent Health, 60(2, Supplement 1), S51. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2016.10.284CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erola, J., Jalonen, S., & Lehti, H. (2016). Parental education, class and income over early life course and children’s achievement. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 44, 33–43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rssm.2016.01.003CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feinstein, L., Sabates, R., Anderson, T. M., Sorhaindo, A., & Hammond, C. ( 2006). What are the effects of education on health? In Desjardins, R., & Schuller, T. (Eds.), Proceedings of the Copenhagen Symposium: Measuring the effects of education on health and civic engagment (pp. 171–340). Copenhagen, Denmark: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.Google Scholar
Ferguson, C. J. (2011). The influence of television and video game use on attention and school problems: A multivariate analysis with other risk factors controlled. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 45(6), 808–813. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2010.11.010CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
García-Moya, I., Brooks, F., Morgan, A., & Moreno, C. (2015). Subjective well-being in adolescence and teacher connectedness. A health asset analysis. Health Education Journal, 74(6), 641–654. https://doi.org/10.1177/0017896914555039CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gutman, L. M., & Vorhaus, J. (2012). The impact of pupil behaviour and wellbeing on educational outcomes. London, UK: Institute of Education, University of London, Childhood Wellbeing Research Centre.Google Scholar
Hamre, B. K., & Pianta, R. C. (2006). Student-teacher relationships. In Bear, G. C. & Minke, K. M. (Eds.), Children’s needs III: Development, prevention, and intervention (pp. 59−71). Washington, DC: National Association of School Psychologists.Google Scholar
Hattie, J. A. C. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. London, UK: Routledge.Google Scholar
Inchley, J., Currie, D., Young, T., Samdal, O., Torsheim, T., Augustson, L., … Barnekow, V. (2016). Growing up unequal: Gender and socioeconomic differences in young people’s health and well-being. Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study (International report from the 2013/2014 survey). Copenhagen, Denmark: WHO Regional Office for Europe.Google Scholar
Jackson, L. A., von Eye, A., Witt, E. A., Zhao, Y., & Fitzgerald, H. E. (2011). A longitudinal study of the effects of Internet use and videogame playing on academic performance and the roles of gender, race and income in these relationships. Computers in Human Behavior, 27(1), 228–239. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2010.08.001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, J., & Shute, V. J. (2010). Personal and social-sontextual factors in K–12 academic performance: An integrative perspective on student learning. Educational Psychologist, 45(3), 185–202. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2010.493471CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, K. T. H., & Vandell, D. L. (2015). Out-of-school time and adolescent substance use. Journal of Adolescent Health, 57(5), 523–529. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2015.07.003CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Matos, M. G., Simões, C., Camacho, I., Reis, M., & Equipa Aventura Social. (2015). HBSC - A saúde dos adolescentes portugueses em tempos de recessão: Dados nacionais 2014 [The health of Portuguese adolescents in times of recession: National data 2014]. Lisboa, Portugal: CMDT, IHMT, UNL, FMH, UTL.Google Scholar
McGrath, K. F., & van Bergen, P. (2015). Who, when, why and to what end? Students at risk of negative student–teacher relationships and their outcomes. Educational Research Review, 14, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2014.12.001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moreno, C., Ramos, P., Rivera, F., Jiménez-Iglesias, A., García-Moya, I., Sánchez-Queija, I., ... Morgan, A. (2016). Informe técnico de los resultados obtenidos por el estudio Health Behavior in School-aged Children (HBSC) 2014 en España [Technical report on the Health Behavior Study in School-aged Children results (HBSC) 2014 in Spain]. Madrid, Spain: Ministerio de Sanidad, Servicios Sociales e Igualdad.Google Scholar
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (2015). What are the advantages today of having an upper secondary qualification? Education Indicators in Focus, 34, 1–4.Google Scholar
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (2016). PISA 2015 results. Excellence and Equity in Education (Vol. I). Paris, France: OECD Publishing.Google Scholar
Rasberry, C. N., Lee, S. M., Robin, L., Laris, B. A., Russell, L. A., Coyle, K. K., & Nihiser, A. J. (2011). The association between school-based physical activity, including physical education, and academic performance: A systematic review of the literature. Preventive Medicine, 52, Supplement, S10–S20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2011.01.027Google ScholarPubMed
Ravens-Sieberer, U., Herdman, M., Devine, J., Otto, C., Bullinger, M., Rose, M., & Klasen, F. (2014). The European KIDSCREEN approach to measure quality of life and well-being in children: Development, current application, and future advances. Quality of Life Research, 23(3), 791–803. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-013-0428-3CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Silvente, V. B., Hurtado, M. J. R., & Baños, R. V. (2013). Cómo aplicar árboles de decisión en SPSS [How to apply decision trees in SPSS]. REIRE, 6(1), 65–79. https://doi.org/10.1344/reire2013.6.1615Google Scholar
Simões, C., Matos, M. G., Melo, P. L., & Antunes, M. (2014). The impact of cumulative risk on adolescents: How it acts on different outcomes and which assets can moderate it. In Ionescu, M. T. S., & Cace, S. (Eds.), Proceedings of the Second World Congress on Resilience - From Person to Society (pp. 101–106). Bologna, Italy: Medimond - International Proceedings.Google Scholar
Simões, C., Matos, M. G., Tomé, G., Ferreira, M., & Chaínho, H. (2010). School satisfaction and academic achievement: The effect of school and internal assets as moderators of this relation in adolescents with special needs. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 9, 1177–1181. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.12.303CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thijs, J., & Fleischmann, F. (2015). Student–teacher relationships and achievement goal orientations: Examining student perceptions in an ethnically diverse sample. Learning and Individual Differences, 42, 53–63. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2015.08.014CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thorburn, M., & Dey, D. (2017). Health and wellbeing and wider achievement: An analysis of teachers’ practices and learners’ experiences in Scottish secondary schools. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 52, 24–34. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stueduc.2016.11.004CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weidman, A. C., Augustine, A. A., Murayama, K., & Elliot, A. J. (2015). Internalizing symptomatology and academic achievement: Bi-directional prospective relations in adolescence. Journal of Research in Personality, 58, 106–114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2015.07.005CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wentzel, K. R., Battle, A., Russell, S. L., & Looney, L. B. (2010). Social supports from teachers and peers as predictors of academic and social motivation. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 35(3), 193–202. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2010.03.002CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wu, J.-Y., Hughes, J. N., & Kwok, O.-M. (2010). Teacher–student relationship quality type in elementary grades: Effects on trajectories for achievement and engagement. Journal of School Psychology, 48(5), 357–387. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsp.2010.06.004CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zimet, G. D., Dahlem, N. W., Zimet, S. G., & Farley, G. K. (1988). The multidimensional scale of perceived social support. Journal of Personality Assessment, 52(1), 30–41. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327752jpa5201_2CrossRefGoogle Scholar