The roles of parent and teacher support in students' academic development: Do associations change over the course of adolescence or is support always important for all students?

Teachers and parents are two important sources of support for students. During adolescence, relationships with different social interaction partners undergo significant changes. However, empirical evidence on how the relative importance of parental and teacher support for adolescents' affective-motivational and performance outcomes may change over time remains limited. Additionally, effects of parent and teacher support may differ by students' background characteristics (gender, migration background, and socioeconomic status), and a better understanding of these patterns is vital for generating more nuanced insights. Thus, we analyzed data from a longitudinal study of 3470 adolescents and their parents from Germany who participated in yearly assessments from fifth to eighth grade. Results from longitudinal structural equation modeling revealed that parent and teacher support positively predicted adolescents' academic identification with school, school satisfaction, and truancy, whereas only parent support was positively associated with students' academic aptitude self-concept and achievement on standardized tests. These associations remained invariant over time. Moreover, the findings did not depend on students' gender, migration background, or socioeconomic status. We discuss implications of these results for theory and research on adolescent development.