TY - JOUR PY - 2019// TI - Shields for emotional well-being in Chinese adolescents who switch schools: the role of teacher autonomy support and grit JO - Frontiers in psychology A1 - Lan, Xiaoyu A1 - Zhang, Lifan SP - e2384 EP - e2384 VL - 10 IS - N2 - Although prior research has demonstrated that switching schools poses a risk for academic and behavioral functioning among adolescents, relatively little is known about their emotional adjustment, or how it affects emotional well-being. Moreover, the cumulative effects of multiple risk and protective factors on their emotional well-being are even less covered in the existing literature. Guided by a risk and resilience ecological framework, the current study compared emotional well-being, operationalized as positive affect and negative affect, between Chinese adolescents who had switched schools and their non-switch counterparts, and examined the direct and interactive effects of teacher autonomy support and two facets of grit (i.e., perseverance and consistency) on emotional well-being in both groups. A propensity score matching analysis was used to balance the two groups in terms of sociodemographic characteristics (i.e., age, gender, and socioeconomic status). A total of 371 adolescents who had switched schools and 742 non-switch counterparts aged from 13 to 18 years were involved in this study.

RESULTS indicated that adolescents who had switched schools reported higher levels of negative affect than their non-switch counterparts. Moreover, for adolescents who had switched schools, those who possessed higher levels of perseverance had a significantly negative association between teacher autonomy support and negative affect; however, the corresponding association was independent of perseverance for their non-switch counterparts. The current findings indicate that switching schools is a disadvantage for adolescents' emotional states. However, teacher autonomy support and perseverance can protect adolescents who switch schools as critical stress-buffering factors against these negative feelings.

Copyright © 2019 Lan and Zhang.

Language: en

LA - en SN - 1664-1078 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02384 ID - ref1 ER -