How does School Experience Relate to Adolescent Identity Formation Over Time? Cross-Lagged Associations between School Engagement, School Burnout and Identity Processing Styles

Abstract

The existing research findings still do not provide a clear understanding of the links between adolescent school experience and their identity formation. To address this gap, we analyzed the dynamic links between adolescent school experiences and identity formation by exploring the cross-lagged associations between school engagement, school burnout and identity processing styles (information-oriented, normative and diffuse-avoidant) over a 2-year period during middle-to-late adolescence. The sample of this school-based study included 916 adolescents (51.4% females) in the 9th to 12th grades from diverse socio-economic and family backgrounds. The results from the cross-lagged analyses with three time points revealed that (a) school engagement positively predicted information-oriented identity processing over a 2-year period; (b) school burnout positively predicted the reliance on normative and diffuse-avoidant identity styles across the three measurements; (c) the effects were stable over the three time points and across different gender, grade, and socio-economic status groups. The unidirectional effects identified in our study support the general prediction that active engagement in learning at school can serve as a resource for adolescent identity formation, while school burnout, in contrast, can hinder the formation of adolescent identity. This points to the importance of taking developmental identity-related needs of adolescents into account when planning the school curriculum.

Not Academic Enough? Enjoyment of Physical Education and the Arts and School Engagement in Early and Middle Adolescence (¿Suficientemente académico? Disfrute de la Educación Física y las Artes e implicación del estudiante con la escuela en la adolescenci

“…Furthermore, school engagement has been associated with lower early high school dropout (Archambault et al, 2009). In line with the previous findings, there is evidence that active engagement in learning at school can serve as a resource for adolescent identity formation (Erentaitë, Vosylis, Gabrialavièiûtë, & Raiþienë, 2018), Individual and contextual antecedents of school engagement have also been reported. For example, in a representative survey of U.S. adolescents, higher levels of student connectedness to school were associated with learning climates encouraging students to make decisions, smaller schools where students feel that teachers care about them, disciplinary policies perceived as not too strict, and participation in extracurricular activities (McNeely, Nonnemaker, & Blum, 2002).…”

School Burnout and School Engagement in Adolescents: The Mediator and Moderator Role of Facebook Addiction

“…Bilişsel bağlılık; öğrenme motivasyonunu, okulda verilen görevleri değerli bulmayı (Ames, 1992), planlama, gözlemde bulunma ve değerlendirme gibi öğrenme stratejileri üzerinde öz-denetim sahibi olmayı içerir (Salmela-Aro ve Upadyaya, 2012; Zimmerman, 1990). Duygusal bağlılık ise sınıf içinde eğlenme, ilgili olma gibi pozitif duygusal tepkileri (Erentaitė, Vosylis, Gabrialavičiūtė ve Raižienė, 2018;Skinner ve Belmont, 1993) ve kişisel özdeşleşme ve aidiyeti içerir (Voelkl, 1997).…”

Evaluation of Sociodemographic and Clinical Profiles of Adolescents Under-18 Years of Age Referred by the Judicial Authorities for Marriage License

“…Schooling is an important factor in the formation of identity and identity experiments during adolescence. Therefore lack of formal education should be considered as an important risk factor that pushes these children to undertake different identitiy experiments outside the school and forces them to assume their adult identity through marriage long before they become productive (27).…”