Investigating Changes in Academic Engagement During Lower Secondary School: The Role of Teacher and Peer Support Through Mental Well-Being and Growth Mindset
This longitudinal study of 1,686 lower secondary students reveals that increases in perceived teacher emotional support and peer relationships foster academic engagement by enhancing mental well-being and growth mindset beliefs.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
Every student knows the feeling of walking into a classroom and feeling ready to learn, only to find that feeling fading as the school year wears on. This is not just a personal mood swing; it is a well-documented pattern in education. Researchers have long observed that as children move through their early teenage years, their active participation in school and their emotional connection to learning tend to drop. This period, roughly ages thirteen to sixteen, is a critical time when academic demands increase and the pressure to perform grows. If students lose their drive during these years, it can affect their entire educational future. To understand why this happens, scientists look at the environment surrounding the student. Two key ideas help explain this dynamic: the support students feel from the people around them, and their internal beliefs about their own abilities. Support comes from teachers who show care and peers who offer friendship, while internal beliefs involve whether a student thinks their intelligence is fixed or something that can grow with effort. When these elements align, students thrive; when they drift apart, engagement often suffers.
A team of researchers in Norway set out to investigate exactly how these factors change together over time. They followed a large group of 1,686 students as they moved from eighth grade to tenth grade, a span of two years. Instead of just asking students how they felt at a single moment, the researchers tracked how each individual student's feelings and behaviors shifted from one year to the next. They measured four main things: how much the students felt supported by their teachers and friends, their general mental well-being, their belief that they could improve their abilities through hard work, and their actual engagement in school, which they broke down into two parts. The first part was behavioral engagement, meaning the visible effort like paying attention and finishing homework. The second was emotional engagement, which refers to how much the students genuinely cared about what they were learning and found it interesting.
The study began by confirming what many educators suspect: on average, things do get a little harder for students as they progress through lower secondary school. When looking at the group as a whole, the researchers found a slight decline in how much students felt supported by their teachers and peers. There was also a small drop in the students' overall mental well-being. Perhaps most notably, the students' emotional connection to their schoolwork decreased more sharply than their behavioral effort. While students continued to show up and do their work, they seemed to care less about it on an emotional level. Interestingly, the students' belief that they could grow their abilities did not change significantly on average; it remained relatively stable across the group, even as other factors shifted. However, the average numbers only tell half the story. The data revealed that not every student followed this downward path. There was significant variation among individuals, meaning that while many students experienced a decline, a considerable number actually saw improvements in their support, well-being, and engagement.
The core of the research focused on how these different pieces fit together. The researchers wanted to know if changes in the social environment—specifically, feeling more supported by teachers and friends—could explain why some students maintained or increased their engagement. They tested a specific chain of events: they hypothesized that better relationships would boost a student's mental well-being and strengthen their belief that they can grow, and that these internal changes would then lead to higher engagement. The results supported this idea. The study found that when a student experienced an increase in emotional support from teachers or a strengthening of friendships with peers, it was linked to an increase in their mental well-being and a stronger belief in their ability to learn. These internal shifts, in turn, were associated with higher levels of both behavioral and emotional engagement in school.
The path from support to engagement was not always direct. Instead, the social environment seemed to work by first changing how the student felt about themselves and their world. For instance, feeling supported by peers was strongly linked to better mental well-being, which then helped the student feel more emotionally connected to their schoolwork. Similarly, when teachers provided emotional support, it helped students believe more strongly in their capacity to grow, which encouraged them to put in more effort. The researchers found that these internal factors—mental well-being and the belief that abilities can be developed—acted as bridges. They translated the external support of a caring teacher or a helpful friend into the internal motivation needed to stay engaged. While the direct link between support and engagement existed, the indirect path through these psychological changes was often stronger, suggesting that the way a student interprets their relationships is just as important as the relationships themselves.
One of the most important takeaways is that the decline in engagement is not inevitable for every student. The study highlighted that individual experiences vary widely. Some students managed to maintain or even improve their connection to school because their relationships with teachers and peers remained positive or improved. This suggests that the classroom environment plays a central role in shaping a student's trajectory. When the social climate is supportive, it can buffer against the natural pressures of adolescence and academic demands. The findings imply that to keep students engaged, schools should focus on nurturing these relationships. It is not enough to simply deliver curriculum; the emotional climate of the classroom matters. By fostering an environment where teachers show genuine care and peers support one another, schools can help students maintain their mental well-being and their belief in their own potential. This, in turn, keeps them emotionally and behaviorally invested in their learning, turning the classroom into a place where they want to be rather than just a place they have to be.
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