School climate, neighborhood quality, teacher support, peer support, and educational resilience of Latino/a adolescents in immigrant families

Abstract

Adolescents' academic success is a significant indicator of future success in life. Therefore, it is important to identify additional factors that serve to keep adolescents on course to achieving higher academic success. Protective factors such as neighborhood quality, teacher support, peer support, and school climate (school safety, school respect, school participation, and school fairness) and the relationship it has on educational resilience (motivation and achievement) in adolescents were examined. The current project focused on Latino/a adolescents and how their generational status related to their perceptions of their neighborhood quality, teacher support, peer support, and school climate and how this related to their educational resilience.

When accounting for gender and parents' educational status, the results indicated school climate (school mutual respect and school safety) had a significant relationship to adolescents' academic motivation. Additionally, the data showed a significant and positive relationship between parental educational attainment and adolescents' academic success. Adolescents' academic motivation was directly related to their academic success (GPA). Furthermore, adolescents' perception of safety within a school was significantly and negatively related to adolescents' academic success. When the interactions between adolescents' generational status and protective factors on academic motivation and academic success were examined, there was a significant interaction between generational status and neighborhood quality on adolescents' academic motivation. When gender was considered a possible moderator, there was a significant interaction between gender and peer support on adolescents' academic success. A significant three-way interaction was found between generational status, gender, and generational status on adolescents' academic success. Post hoc analyses indicated that the association of peer support and academic motivation was greater for Latina than Latino adolescents. Latino adolescents perceived peer support regardless of it being high or low did not serve to predict Latino adolescents' academic success. However, for Latina adolescents who were considered first generation, the higher the perceived peer support they report, the lower their academic achievement compared to second and third-generation Latina adolescents.

These findings add to the current body of literature by expanding on the influence's generational status and other protective factors on adolescents' educational resilience (academic motivation and academic success). Understanding that their generational status influences Latino/a adolescents' perception of neighborhood qualities and peer support, one can work with the adolescents to identify strategies to help foster resilience when situations pose higher risks to them being academically successful.