The Relationship Between Negative Life Events And Academic Adaptation In High School Students: A Regulated Intermediary Model

Academic adaptation is an ability which individuals have to adjust their learning attitude and style to overcome the difficulties and achieve the balance of learning environment when they face the change of learning environment and learning aims. The situation of academic adaptation has a crucial effect on the academic performance, physical and mental development for high school students. High school period is the stage during which the body develops fast while the psychology develops lagged, they face the challenge of academic pressure, interpersonal conflicts, personal mood swing and other negative life events.Negative life event is a vital factor of complex factors that can affect academic adaptation.Although previous studies explained the relationship between negative life events and academic adaptation, the prediction between them is worthy of further verification.The current research on the influence mechanism of negative life events on academic adaptation is insufficient.What effect negative life events have on individuals, and then how they work on academic adaptation are valuable questions for further discussion.According to “the stress buffering hypothesis”, students’ perception of teacher’s supporting as a part of social support which is most likely to regulate the relationship between negative life events and academic adaptation.So high school students are selected as research subjects in this study to investigate the relationship between negative life events, general self-efficacy, perception of teachers’ supporting and academic adaptation.This study is based on the discussion of the concept and measurement of negative life events, general self efficacy, students’ perception of teacher’s supporting, and academic adaptation, as well as the review of the relationship among them from the results in existing researches. Based on the above review, 633 students in Senior One, Senior Two and Three from one middle high school participated in this investigation which selected the Adolescent Self-rating Life Events Checklist, the General Self-Efficacy Scale, the Students’ Perception of Teacher’s Supporting Scale and the Academic Adaption Action Scale as research tools. The results show that:1. Senior high school students’ academic adaptation is in the middle-upper level,there is only one difference in aspect of learning habits, boys’ learning habits are obviously higher than the girls’. Senior high school students experience negative life events mainly in aspects of learning pressure and interpersonal relationship.There are significant differences in aspects of gender and grade. One-grade senior high school students experienced significantly more negative life events than three-grade students;2. Negative life events is significantly negatively related to general self-efficacy,students’ perception of teacher’s supporting, academic adaptation, negative life events has a negatively predictive influence on academic adaptation; There is a positive correlation among general self-efficacy, students’ perception of teacher’s supporting and academic adaptation.3. Negative life events not only directly affect academic adaptation, but also influence academic adaptation through the general self-efficacy, namely general self-efficacy plays an partly mediating role between negative life events and academic adaptation.4. Students’ perception of teacher’s supporting can adjust the impact of negative life events on their academic adjustment. Only when the teacher support is in the low level will the effect of negative life events reduce the individual academic adaptation level significantly.The second half of the intermediary path is regulated by students’ perception of teacher’s supporting. The positive predictive effect of general self-efficacy on academic adaptation is greater in case of low teacher support.