The Influence Of Peer Support On Middle School Students’Learning Engagement

Peer group is important for young people’s development. Peer support is an important part of the social support system. Peer support can not be replaced by other social supports, such as parent support and teacher support. Peer support may play an essential role in improving learning engagement for junior middle school students who are in a danger of dropping out. What is the character and importance of peer support comparing with teacher support? How can we enhance learning engagement by improving students’peer support through effective intervention? This study will discuss about it.This study includes two sub-studies. One selected middle school students from urban and rural areas of Xinyang, Henan(include grade seven and eight) through stratified cluster sampling to explore the relationship between peer and teacher support and learning engagement. The results showed that the peer behavioral and emotional support have significant differences in gender. Girls’were significantly higher than boys’. Peer behavior support, teacher support, behavioral and emotional investment present significant differences in grade. Teacher support, peer behavioral and emotional support, all have significant influence on learning engagement. While, peer behavioral and emotional support explain the most variation of learning engagement.The second research is intervention study. We select a class of eighth grade from an ordinary middle school. The intervention program contains8themes which is designed from recording positive activities, providing peer behavioral and emotional support. Results shows that intervention programs achieve ideal effects that helps students improve peer support and learning engagement.The main conclusions of this study is:(1) The eighth grade’s peer support, teacher support and learning engagement is significantly higher than the seventh grade’s. We need particularly pay close attention on boy.(2) Both peer support and teacher support have importance on students’learning engagement. While, peer support acts more.(3) Peer support intervention program contributes to students’ mental health and is valuable to improve learning engagement and guards against dropping out.