The Relationship Between Parental Educational Anxiety And Adolescent Academic Engagement: The Role Of Cognition, Behavior, And Emotio

In recent years,as people pay more and more attention to education,educational anxiety has become a real picture of Chinese parents’ education and a major issue in China’s family education,which has attracted widespread attention because of its important impact on children’s development and education.At present,research on parental education anxiety is in its initial stage.On the one hand,the existing studies do not have an accurate understanding of educational anxiety,and most of them only focus on the symptoms or sources of educational anxiety alone;on the other hand,unlike general anxiety,the most important feature of parental educational anxiety is that it is directed at "children",i.e.,parents’ anxiety caused by their children’s education.Therefore,parental education anxiety has an important impact on children’s schooling,but its specific impact is still unclear and the related mechanisms are not explored.In this study,we chose an individual-centered approach to measure both individual education anxiety symptoms and sources of education anxiety,and to explore the different ways in which the two factors combine in individuals in order to understand the types of parental education anxiety,and the differences in how different types of parental education anxiety affect adolescents.In addition,previous studies on the effects of educational anxiety on adolescents have mostly used cross-sectional studies,and causal relationships cannot be obtained.In this study,a longitudinal follow-up research method will be used to examine the effects of parental educational anxiety on adolescents’ academic performance and to explore the related mechanisms of action from three perspectives: cognitive,behavioral,and emotional.In this study,questionnaires were used to select fifth and sixth grade students in elementary school and seventh and eighth grade students in middle school and their primary caregivers as the study subjects.Longitudinal follow-up was conducted,and relevant data were collected in two sessions.The study instruments included the Educational Anxiety Source Scale and the Educational Anxiety Symptom Scale reported by the adolescents’ primary caregivers to measure the level of parental educational anxiety,and the Parent-Child Educational Expectations Questionnaire,the Parental Supervision Scale,the Perceived Parental Academic Involvement Scale,the Parental Psychological Control Scale,the Child Behavior Checklist,and the Academic Engagement and Withdrawal Questionnaire reported by the adolescents to measure the perceived parental educational Expectations,self-education expectations,parental supervision,perceived parental academic involvement,parental psychological control,self-anxiety and depression,and academic engagement levels were measured.SPSS 26.0and Mplus 8.0 were used to statistically analyze the data.The main findings and conclusions of the study were as follows:(1)Using Latent Profile Analysis(LPA)to classify the types of parental educational anxiety,four types of profiles were found: the first type of parents with low educational anxiety symptoms and few sources,i.e.,"low educational anxiety",accounting for 9.95%of the total number of parents;the second type of parents with low educational anxiety symptoms and moderate sources,i.e."parents with low educational anxiety symptoms and moderate sources,accounting for 46.39% of the total;the third type of parents with low educational anxiety symptoms and many sources,i.e.," low educational anxiety symptoms-high anxiety sources," accounting for 41.19% of the total;the fourth type of parents with high educational anxiety symptoms and many sources,i.e.," low educational anxiety symptoms-high anxiety sources.The fourth type of parents with high educational anxiety symptoms and many sources,i.e.,"high educational anxiety",accounted for2.47% of the total number of subjects.This result indicates that parents’ education anxiety is characterized by "strong feelings and weak harm".(2)Based on the four types of educational anxiety obtained from the latent profile analysis,a one-way ANOVA was used to further investigate whether there were differences in the effects of different types of parental educational anxiety on adolescents.The results showed that adolescents in the high parental educational anxiety group had the lowest level of academic engagement and were subject to the most parental psychological control;adolescents in the low parental educational anxiety group could perceive the highest parental educational expectations and were subject to the least parental psychological control;compared to the high educational anxiety group and the low anxiety symptom-high anxiety source group,parents in the low educational anxiety group and the low anxiety symptom-moderate anxiety source group had more supervision and academic engagement with their children.(3)This study found that parental educational anxiety had a negative effect on adolescents’ academic engagement six months later.The higher the level of parental educational anxiety,the lower the academic engagement of adolescents after six months.(4)Perceived parenting expectations and adolescent self-education expectations play a chain mediating role in the effect of parenting anxiety on academic engagement.Specifically,the higher the level of parental educational anxiety,the lower the adolescents’ perceived parental educational expectation,and the lower the self-education expectation,which would lead to a reduction in their academic engagement and more academic withdrawal.This suggests that high levels of parental educational anxiety can cause children to feel that their parents do not approve of their academic abilities and performance,thus doubting their own abilities and internalizing such low expectations and losing motivation to learn.(5)Parental monitoring and perceived parental academic involvement play a chain mediating role in the relationship between parental educational anxiety and adolescent academic engagement.Specifically,the higher the level of parental educational anxiety and the less supervisory behavior,the lower the perceived parental academic involvement of adolescents,the less academic engagement and the more academic withdrawal.This result suggests that parental educational anxiety decreases involvement in children’s academics,and adolescents do not receive the help and support provided from their parents and are less engaged in their studies.(6)Parental psychological control and adolescent anxiety and depression play a chain mediating role in parental educational anxiety and adolescent academic engagement.Specifically,the higher the level of parental educational anxiety and the more psychological control they have over their children,the more likely adolescents are to experience anxiety and depression,resulting in less academic engagement and more academic withdrawal.This suggests that parenting anxiety affects parent-child relationships as well as adolescents’ emotional development,which in turn has a negative impact on adolescents’ physical and mental health and academic adjustment.