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Links Between Teachers’ Liking of Students, Peer Inclusion, and Students’ Academic Achievement: A Two-Wave Longitudinal Study

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Abstract

Students who are more liked by their teachers tend to be included by their peers and to perform successfully at school. Yet, very little is known whether peer inclusion can mediate the effect of teachers’ liking of students on students’ academic achievement. Teachers from Grades 5 and 6 reported their liking of each student and academic achievement (N = 1209; 49% females), whereas peers rated the inclusion of classmates. Results from a multilevel growth curve model revealed that, only at the individual level, higher values of peer inclusion mediated the association between teachers’ liking of students and academic achievement over time. This study provides new insights into the complex associations between teachers’ liking of students and academic achievement during early adolescence.

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Notes

  1. Since these data are part of a larger research project, data on students’ academic achievement at T1 have been used in previous articles (Gasser et al. 2017, 2018).

  2. Three-level growth curve models (level-1 = time; level-2 = students; level-3 = classrooms) can be estimated in Mplus structuring the dataset in a wide format and using a two-level framework as explained in the Mplus User Guide (see example 9.12; Muthén and Muthén 1998–2017). Given the presence of only two waves of data, the residual variances of the indicators were fixed at zero to allow model identification.

  3. Since all possible parameters were estimated in multilevel growth curves (i.e., zero degrees of freedom), no fit indexes are reported because the models were just identified (i.e., perfect fit to the data; see Kline, 2015).

  4. An alternative multivariate multilevel growth curve model was run in order to analyze if the change in teachers’ liking of students played a mediational role in the link between the change in peer inclusion and the change in academic achievement at both within-(students) and between- (classrooms) levels. Only at individual level, the changes in teachers’ liking of students played a mediational role (95% CI = 0.003, 0.025).

  5. The hypothesized mediational model was tested among boys and girls and Swiss and non-Swiss students. Results from models run separately for boys and girls revealed that, at the student-level, the changes in peer inclusion were a significant mediator of the link between changes in teachers’ liking of students and changes in academic achievement only for boys (95% CI = 0.002, 0.038) but not for girls (95% CI = −0.003, 0.031). Also, results indicated that, at the student level, the changes in peer inclusion were a significant mediator of the link between changes in teachers’ liking of students and changes in academic achievement only for Swiss students (95% CI = 0.003, 0.028) but not for non-Swiss students (95% CI = −0.008, 0.017). At the classroom-level, the change in peer inclusion did not play a mediational role across all groups.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Dr. Antonio Zuffianò for the help and support in the analyses. The authors also thank the children and teachers who participated in this study.

Authors’ Contributions

SS participated in the design, performed the statistical analysis, participated in the interpretation of the data, drafted the manuscript, and revised it critically for important intellectual content; LG conceived of the study, participated in its design and coordination, acquired data, participated in the interpretation of the data, drafted the manuscript, and revised it critically for important intellectual content; and JG participated in the design and coordination of the study, acquired the data, participated in the interpretation of the data, helped to draft the manuscript, and revised it critically for important intellectual content. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Funding

This study was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (13DPD3_124764).

Data Sharing Declaration

The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Medicine and Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Via dei Marsi 78, Rome, 00185, Italy

    Stefania Sette

  2. Institute for School and Diversity, University of Teacher Education Lucerne, Lucerne, Switzerland

    Luciano Gasser

  3. Jacobs Center of Productive Youth Development, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Jeanine Grütter

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  1. Stefania Sette
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Correspondence to Stefania Sette.

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Sette, S., Gasser, L. & Grütter, J. Links Between Teachers’ Liking of Students, Peer Inclusion, and Students’ Academic Achievement: A Two-Wave Longitudinal Study. J Youth Adolescence 49, 747–756 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-019-01048-5

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