The role of mothers in supporting adaptation in school: A psychological needs perspective.

Abstract

School is where adolescents spend the largest share of their waking time. The present study focused on the factors that contribute to students' adjustment to school from a self-determination perspective. We tested the predictive value of parental behaviors (autonomy support, structure, and involvement) on the different dimensions of school adjustment (social, academic, and personal-emotional) and the mediating role played by psychological need satisfaction in school (i.e., autonomy, competence, and relatedness). The sample included 663 adolescents (55% girls) surveyed over a 3-year period. Results supported the unique contribution of parental behaviors and psychological need satisfaction for different dimensions of school adjustment. Indirect effects suggested that the need for relatedness explains the relationship from structure to school adjustment, whereas competence explained the prediction of autonomy support on social adjustment. These findings can guide interventions for students by identifying the family and personal factors that contribute to their academic, social, and personal-emotional adjustment. Educational Impact and Implications StatementThis longitudinal study suggests that maternal autonomy support, involvement, and structure predict adolescents' ability to deal with academic demands, social expectations, and pressure in the school setting. It also showed that these predictions partly occurred through the satisfaction of youths' needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Interventions aimed to improve students' adjustment in school therefore benefit from teaching parents to be autonomy supportive, involved, and structuring in their interactions with their child.

Self-determined motivation profiles among undergraduate students: A robust test of profile similarity as a function of gender and age

“…Based on SDT (Grolnick, Deci, & Ryan, 1997), in which these parental characteristics are explicitly proposed to contribute to the satisfaction of youth psychological needs, it would be logical to expect mother and father involvement, autonomy support, and warmth to foster autonomous forms of motivation and to decrease controlled forms of motivation and amotivation. Indeed, these parental behaviors have been repeatedly found to predict important academic outcomes such as students' psychological need satisfaction in school, and a variety of desirable motivational outcomes (Guay et al, 2008;Pomerantz et al, 2012;Ratelle & Duchesne, 2017). To the best of our knowledge, the current study represents the first attempt to examine the role of parental need supporting behaviors in the prediction of membership in motivation profiles.…”

Pathways to Student Motivation: A Meta-Analysis of Antecedents of Autonomous and Controlled Motivations

“…This shortcoming represents a gap in the literature. Additionally, the limited body of research addressing teacher and parental control, as well as other need-supportive behaviors (competence support and relatedness support; Ratelle et al, 2021 ) restricted our ability to implement these variables in the current analysis, even though they fall within the theoretical scope of motivational antecedents theorized by SDT. This was also the case for need frustration variables ( Vansteenkiste & Ryan, 2013 ).…”

Applying Self-Determination Theory to Education: Regulations Types, Psychological Needs, and Autonomy Supporting Behaviors

“…In this field of research, parental autonomy support has been associated to many positive outcomes directly or indirectly through the satisfaction of psychological needs or through autonomous motivation. Examples of these outcomes are school persistence (Vallerand et al, 1997), school performance or achievement (Guay & Vallerand, 1996), career indecision (Guay, Senécal et al, 2003), school adjustment (Ratelle et al, 2021), and vocational exploration (Gagnon et al, 2019).…”