The Role of Parent and Teacher Support in Students’ Academic Development: Changing Associations Over the Course of Adolescence or Always Important For All?

Teachers and parents are two important socializers for students. During adolescence, relationships with different social interaction partners undergo significant changes. However, empirical evidence regarding potential shifts in the importance of parents’ and teachers’ support for multiple dimensions of adolescents’ academic development over time is still lacking. Additionally, effects of teacher and parent support may differ depending on student background characteristics (gender, migration background, and socioeconomic status), and better understanding these issues is vital for theory building and for supporting students with diverse backgrounds to thrive academically. The present study therefore analyzed data from a longitudinal study with 3,470 adolescents from Germany who participated in yearly assessments from fifth to eighth grade. Results from longitudinal structural equation modelling revealed that parent and teacher support predicted adaptive changes in adolescents’ academic identification with school, school satisfaction, and truancy, whereas only parent support had a positive association with students’ self-concept of academic aptitude and achievement on standardized tests. These associations remained invariant over time and when we used parent reports instead of student reports on support. Moreover, the findings did not differ depending on students’ gender, migration background, or socioeconomic status. We discuss implications of these results for theory and research on adolescent development, and for practice.