A Conceptual Model of the Mechanisms by which Ego Resiliency Impacts Academic Engagement and Achievement: Social Relatedness as a Mediator

The current study tested the effect of ego resilience on engagement and achievement as mediated by social relatedness, using three waves of data and controlling for the stability of each construct as well as within wave correlations among study variables. Using structural equation modeling, we were able to control for the stability of each construct as well as the within wave correlations of residual error variances between constructs. The model also took into account the transactional properties of academic engagement and academic achievement. Furthermore, the study tested the moderation effects of gender on each theoretically-significant path. Despite the models having adequate fit indices, in the larger context of the model the hypothesis that ego resiliency predicts subsequent social relatedness was not supported in either reading or math revised models. Because of this, the overall study hypothesis that social relatedness would mediate the relationship between ego resiliency and subsequent academic engagement and achievement was not supported. However, there were several findings of interest. The results of this study were consistent with the reasoning that social relatedness helps children feel more accepted and supported by peers and teachers, therefore promoting more classroom engagement. Findings suggested that, while social interactions seem to impact students? academic engagement across in the subsequent year, their level of ego resilience at school entry appears to be an important long-term contributor to math achievement two years later. The moderation analyses indicated that ego resilience had more effect on boys? reading achievement and academic engagement two years later. Study limitations and implications were also discussed.