The Significance of Adolescents’ Relationships with Significant Others and School Failure

This article demonstrates the importance of social support from students’ significant others (parents, peers and teachers) in the process of doing well at school. The main focus of the research project was to find correlations between the quality of adolescents’ relationships with significant others and their school success or school failure, as measured by their average grades. One hundred adolescents experiencing school failure [mean school grade 2.9 (FX) or below] and 100 adolescents without any problems with learning [mean school grade 4.1 (C) or more] participated in the study. In each of the groups half of the participants were female and half were male. All the students were attending the second class of gymnasium; their mean age was 14. The students were attending eight different schools in one Polish town.

The main hypothesis of the study was that students experiencing school failure differ from these with school success in the quality of their relationships with significant others, as measured by the different amount of perceived social support from their mothers, fathers, peers and teachers. The results show that teenagers need parental support in the form of attachment with, not detachment from their parents. Perceived parents’, peers’ and teacher's support helps teenagers to get good marks. Therefore, in order to help teenagers to achieve school success pedagogues should teach them not only academic skills, but show them how to create and maintain good relations with their parents and peers.