Developmental Trajectories Of School Emotional Engagement During Middle And Late Childhood

School emotional engagement plays an essential role in children's academic performance and school adjustment.The present study aimed to explore the developmental trajectories of school emotional engagement during middle-late childhood,and the effects of parenting practice and peer acceptance on children's school emotional engagement.The current study consists of two sub-studies:The first study recruited 5979 students from 11 primary and middle schools.Children reported their level of school emotional engagement and their parenting practices.Peer acceptance was obtained from peer nominations.One-way analysis of variance and regression analysis were used to explore the grade differences of school emotional engagement,and the predictive effect of parenting styles and peer acceptance on school emotional investment.Based on the first study,the second study explored the longitudinal trajectories of school emotional engagement and the relationships over time between school emotional engagement and parenting practices and peer acceptance using latent growth models(LGM).Participants were 490 fourth-grade students recruited from 5 primary schools.The results of cross-sectional study show that:1)There were significant differences in the school emotional engagement of children from grade 4 to grade 8,and the level of school emotional engagement in lower grades was significantly higher than that in upper grades;2)The positive parenting practices could positively predict school emotional engagement.However,negative parenting practices was a negative predictor of school emotional engagement.3)Peer acceptance has a positive predictive effect on school emotional engagement;4)There were different interaction effects between paternal and maternal parenting practices on children's school emotional engagement.Maternal positive practices interacted with paternal positive practices in predicting school emotional engagement,but the interaction effect between Maternal positive practices and paternal negative practices was not significant.Maternal negative practices interacted with paternal negative and positive practices in predicting school emotional engagement.One parent's negative parenting reduced the relationship between the other parent's parenting practices and children's school emotional engagement.The results of the longitudinal study revealed that: 1)Children's school emotional engagement increased first and then decreased in grade 4 to grade 8.There was no significant impact on the initial level and slope of school emotional engagement between girls and boys.2)The initial level of positive parenting could negatively predict the changes in school emotional engagement.The higher the initial level of positive parenting,the slower the decline of school emotional engagement.3)Both paternal and maternal negative parenting's initial level had no significant effect on the slope of school emotional engagement.4)The initial level of peer acceptance had no significant effect on the changes in school emotional engagement.