Sucesso escolar, adaptação pessoal, familiar, escolar e social percebidos pelos adolescentes algarvios

Abstract

School Achievement is a phenomenon that we use as a barometer on the development of democratic societies. However, there seems to be more literary production than field research, therefore the need to investigate the phenomenon. This study was developed in the Portuguese region of the Algarve. We used the term School Achievement as making reference to processes and results that identify if students achieve the requirements determined by school system adequately. From this query we tried to carry out a differential diagnosis of the variable which combine and influence the variety of causes and multidimensional dynamics of School Achievement. The main goal of this research is to establish how personal, family, school and social adjustment perceived by students from year 5 and year 9, from the region of the Algarve, influence their School Achievement, and in order to do it we carried out three empirical studies: 1) the study of general, personal, family, school and social adjustment of students from the region of the Algarve from year 5 and year 9; 2) a comparative study of the academic, social, emotional, family and physical self-concept on both group of students; 3) causative factors that leads to school success perceived by students of year 5 and year 9. With a sample of 1595 students, 839 girls and 756 boys, from year 5 (809 students) and from year 9 (786 students) within the 16 boroughs of the Algarve (Sotavento and Barlavento). For the gathering of data, a protocol was carried out containing a data- collection questionnaire, where each student registered their social demographic information, academic situation of their peers, their parents and their own, and the relationship with their parents, Catell�s Factor �g� Test- scales 2 and 3 (Catell and Catell, 1986) (screening test), scale AF-5 - self- concept Test form 5 (Garci'a and Musitu, 2009) and TAMAI Test - Test Auto Multifactorial de Infantile Adaptagao (Hernández, 2004). The obtained results allowed us to analyze the main purpose which was initially considered and reach several conclusions. Thereby, we identified School Achievement as a central part in students� lives, but in total dynamic interrelation with the Micro-system, Meso-system, Exo-system and Macro-system which characterize the students� contexts, presenting multi-cause, multi-factor and multi-dimensional matter. Through the procedure of factorial analysis we acknowledged that they concur as clarifying factors of School Achievement the students� Adjustment (general, personal, and social lack of adjustment); Non-Parenting Control (age, total of people added in social networks, personalized education - negative value and parental socialization), the Computer Devotion (total of hours spent on the computer sending short messages, e-mails and searching general social sites and interests), the Mobile Phone Devotion (total of hours spent on the mobile phone sending SMS, talking with friends and family), Self- concept (academic, social, family and physical self-concept), School performance (Factor �g� and the academic self-concept), Family structure (older brothers, parents �age), Family vulnerabilities (total number of siblings and family lack of adjustment), Sports activities (hours spent practicing sport), School implications (years of frequency in Preschool, hours spent on studying per week) and the first Academic steps (number of teachers in primary school). It was equally possible to identify that students with better general, personal, family, school and social adjustment present better School Achievement and that girls are more successful than boys on this matter. In addition, students with better general and school adjustment present better academic self-concept, and given the existence of a dynamic and reciprocal cause between the self-concept and School Achievement, also report greater School Achievement.