Social Sources of Strengths for Latino Middle School Students: Direct and Mediated Supports from Teachers, Family, and Friends

Background and Purpose: Social relationships for students, with teachers, parents, and peers, have been shown to build strengths in the areas of behaviors at school, attitudes and beliefs about school, and ultimately academic performance. Latino students are the largest minority ethnic group in the public schools; however, recent analyses show Latino students have a national graduation rate of 53%, 59% for girls and 48% for boys. Yet, research focused on the social factors impacting Latino students' school outcomes has lagged behind research on other student groups. Ecological and social capital theories informed the current research, which assert the influence of supportive social relations with adults at home and at school, and with peers, on school outcomes.

Methods: Utilizing survey data collected from 848 Latino middle school students and a structural equation modeling analytic strategy, the direct and mediated influences of students' relationships with teachers, parents, and friends on school outcomes were examined. We anticipated that such social relationships would have significant and interconnected effects on school outcomes. We hypothesized two stages of mediated relationships in the context of current research. First, we hypothesized that satisfaction with school and behavior at school would fully mediate the influence of teacher support on grades and time on homework. Second, we hypothesized that the influence of parent support, parent education monitoring, and friend support on both school behavior and school satisfaction would be mediated through teacher support.

Results: A well fitting structural equation model (CFI = .940, IFI = .941, RMSEA = .030) revealed teacher support impacts all four student outcomes. Teacher support was directly related to both student behavior and satisfaction with school with those two outcomes mediating the influence of teacher support on time spent on homework and grades. Parent support, friend support, friend school behavior, and parent monitoring of educational issues all had direct associations with student reports of teacher support. Friend school behavior was directly associated with student behavior at school while parent education monitoring directly influenced school satisfaction. However, as expected, the association of parent support and friend support on all four school outcomes was mediated through teacher support.

Conclusions and Implications: Our findings are consistent with ecological and social capital theories, and highlight the pivotal role that the teacher-student relationship plays for Latino middle school students. Teachers are not often trained in effective management of interpersonal relationships with students; school social workers can bring valuable consultation skills to assist teachers in such efforts. Our findings also illuminate the intersections across the microsystems of school, family, and peers, which both reinforce the mesosystem influences asserted in ecological theory and have important implications for the design and development of programming and policy to advance the school success of Latino students.