Abstract
Background: During secondary education, a stage with a high risk of failure and school dropout, social support is an important contextual variable for the prevention of school maladjustment. The aim of this study is to examine a theoretical model of the explanatory capacity of social support in terms of school adjustment, understood as school engagement and perceived academic performance. Method: Participants were 1,468 students (51% girls; 49% boys) from the Basque Country, aged between 12 and 17 (M=14.03, SD=1.36). The study had an ex post facto cross-sectional design. The measurement instruments used were: TCMS –teacher support subscale, AFA-R –family support and peer support subscales, SEM –School Engagement Measure, and EBAE-10 - perceived academic performance subscale. Various different structural models were tested. Results: The first-choice model was one in which social support predicts school engagement with perceived academic performance as a mediating variable: together, both variables predict 73% of school engagement. The strongest effect was that of teacher support, followed by family support, whereas friends were not found to have any direct effect on school adjustment variables. Conclusions: Teachers and families should strive to offer social support to students as a means of strengthening perceived academic self-efficacy and school engagement.
