On the 6th of September 2024, the Portuguese Let’s Care team participated in the 9th European Network for Social and Emotional Competence (ENSEC) Conference in Chania (Greece). The presentation, entitled “School Engagement and Academic Achievement: The role of relationships with parents and peers”, highlighted some of the main results from a systematic literature review conducted in the Let’s Care Project. This literature review considered the published evidence on the association between socio-emotional security and school outcomes (academic achievement and school engagement). The majority of the selected studies showed significant associations or predictive power of the independent variables.
In relation to academic achievement, main results from the analyzed studies revealed that securely attached children reported better academic scores (Zarrella et al., 2018). Moreover, the quality of parent-child relationships predicted academic achievement (Evans & Field, 2020; Toor, 2018) and parental involvement and emotional support was also linked with better academic achievement (Chung et al., 2020; Lui et al., 2022; Saracostii et al., 2019). Besides parents, non-family members’ support was positively correlated with better academic achievement (O’Neal et al., 2022).
Regarding school engagement, significant correlations were found in the literature between attachment to parents and peers and school engagement (Sevari & Rezaei, 2019). Both parental support (Ryan et al., 2019; Toraman et al., 2022) and peer support (Göbel & Preusche, 2019; Ryan et al., 2019; Saleh et al., 2019) predicted school engagement.
