TEACHER SUPPORT

Teacher support measures the amount of help, concern and friendship the teacher directs toward

the students. Teacher plays a vital role to create environment that supports effective teaching and

learning in the classrooms. Thus the organization of learning space: learner involvement and

discipline in the classroom are important factors influencing academic achievement. Teacher

support refers to students’ beliefs that their teachers care about them, value them and establish

personal relationships with them (Sharma, 2016) Teacher support enhances a teacher's relationship

with a student. Specifically, teachers who support students show their care and concern for their

students, so these students often reciprocate this concern and respect for the teacher by adhering

to classroom norms. (Lei , Cui, and Chiu 2018).

Research based on motivation theory has found that when teacher-student relationships

were measured from elementary students’ perspectives, students who reported high levels of

teacher support were 89% more likely than average students to feel optimally engaged, and

students who perceived low teacher support were 109% more likely to feel disengaged as average

student (Berman-Young, 2014) . One of these factors is the quality of relationships with teachers

and peers, with whom students interact frequently during the course of a school day . Because of

their frequent interactions, one may expect teachers and peers to serve as significant sources of

support for students’ academic endeavors. In fact, researchers in the United States have shown that

positive interactions with teachers and peers contribute to students’ motivation to learn, academic

achievement, and psychological functioning, whereas adverse interactions with teachers and peers

tend to place students at risk for manifesting behavioral problems, leading to poorer school
performance. (Chen., 2005). Blum (2005) suggested that connectedness to school is about

creating an environment that helps students trust that teachers care about their learning

and about them as individuals. Teachers who have fair and consistent discipline policies,

positive and proactive classroom management and the skills required to meet students’

developmental needs are in a position to increase students’ sense of being cared for.

These teachers provide a healthy environment that may improve students’ health and

well-being. (Andersen, Ronningen and Løhre, 2019)

PEER CONNECTEDNESS

Peer connectedness is defined as perceptions of support, genuine caring, and trust in one’s peer

group. Research is clear that peers influence youth behaviors; for example, youth who affiliate

with peers who engage in delinquent behaviors are more likely to engage in these behaviors

themselves while youth who have relationships with more positive peers are less likely to engage

in violence and delinquency). The quality of peer relationships is also linked to depression and

suicidality. (Foster, Horwitz, Thomas, Opperman., Gipson, Burnside, King, C. A. 2017).

Peer relationships also had a particular importance in an adolescent’s sense of school belonging.

It has been argued in the literature that a high quality of peer relationships or supportive friendships

satisfies the adolescents’ need to belong, because it fulfills the need to connect with others. For

example, Osterman (2000) demonstrated that peer acceptance and support are important

components of school belonging. By defining peer acceptance in terms of a student’s relationships

with classmates, and the consensual like or dislike that is directed by the group toward the student,
he marked peer relationships as one aspect of a student’s sense of school belonging, and admits

students who are accepted by their peers demonstrate more academic and social competence (Uslu

and Gizir 2017). Given that adolescents spend a large amount of time with their peers during the

course of each school day, it is reasonable to expect that they influence one another’s academic

engagement and achievement outcomes. In particular, re- searchers in the United States have found

that peers affect all facets of a student’s life, especially social and emotional adjustment,

educational aspirations, and day-to-day behavior in school. (Coyl, Jones, and Dick, 2004).