Coping, school adjustment and academic achievement in early adolescence

Objective:School activities are demanding for adolescents and activate strategies to manage them, promoting specific behaviours and outcomes in the academic environment. Drawing from the motivational theory of coping, coping included multiple adaptive strategies that are relevant to understand educational outcomes. This study is focused to examine the relation between adaptive coping, school adjustment and academic achievement in the adolescent. Method:Participants were 1376 adolescents (mean age = 12.89; SD = 1.00; 51.38% girls) from Colombia, South America. They were surveyed using questionnaires and school grades were collected, in a cross-sectional design. The mediational model was tested using latent-variable structural equation modelling. Results:Coping was significantly related to school adjustment, school adjustment was related to academic achievement, and the indirect effect of coping on academic achievement through school adjustment was significant. The direct effect of coping on academic achievement was not significant. Coping-adjustment-achievement path model is verified, without obtaining support for adjustment as an independent variable. Conclusions:The findings suggest that students' academic coping plays a role in better academic achievement by enhancing positive school adjustment.