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Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 116 (2014) 2936 – 2940
5th World Conference on Educational Sciences - WCES 2013
Relationship between social competence, learning motivation, and
school anxiety in primary school
Šarūnė Magelinskaitė *, Albina Kepalaitė, Visvaldas Legkauskas
Vytautas Magnus University, Donelaičio str. 52, Kaunas, LT-44244, Lithuania
Abstract
The purpose of the present study is to assess relationship between social competence, learning motivation and school anxiety
among 1st and 2nd grade pupils in Lithuania. Subjects were 124 pupils (47 boys and 77 girls) attending 1st (63 subjects) and 2nd
(61 subjects) grade in primary school in Kaunas, Lithuania. Results of the study revealed that higher social competence of
primary school pupils was related to higher learning motivation (r = .382, p < .001) and lower school anxiety (r = - .487, p <
.001). Higher school anxiety was linked to lower learning motivation (r = - .207, p= .025).
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© 2013
2013 The
Authors.
by Elsevier
Ltd.
Selection
and peer
reviewunder
underresponsibility
the responsibility
of Prof.
Dr.Education
Servet Bayram
Selection and/or
peer-review
of Academic
World
and Research Center.
Keywords: Social competence, learning motivation, school anxiety, primary school;
1. Introduction
Currently it is widely recognized that successful adjustment at school requires not only cognitive competences,
but social competence as well (Bernard, 2006; Denham et al., 2009; Ladd et al., 2006). We define social competence
as a person’s ability to apply social skills effectively in order to reach his/her goals in social interactions. At the time
of entry into the primary school social competence includes such social skills as self-control, self-esteem, ability to
understand and follow directions and rules, conflict resolution skills, communication, cooperation, and relationship
skills (Forget-Dubois et al., 2007; Sassu, 2007). According to Webster-Stratton and Reid (2004), children, who lack
social competence, do less well in school – they are more likely to be rejected by their peers and get less positive
feedback from teachers, which often results in more off task behavior and less instruction time.
Research on the role of social competence in primary school adjustment often focuses link between social
competence and academic achievement. There is ample evidence of positive relationship between these two
variables (Elias & Haynes, 2008; Magelinskaitė, 2011; McClleland et al., 2006). However, relationship between
primary school children’s social competence and non-academic adjustment indicators has received little research
attention. One of the few exceptions is a recent study by Magelinskaitė (2011), which has revealed that social
competence at the beginning of the 1st grade was strongly linked to quality of pupil-teacher relationship and
moderately correlated with popularity in class half a year later.
Two other adjustment variables, which have received virtually no attention of social competence researchers, are
school anxiety and learning motivation. While both of these variables are important indicators of children’s
* Corresponding Author Šarūnė Magelinskaitė. Tel.: +370-672-08676
E-mail address: [email protected]
1877-0428 © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Academic World Education and Research Center.
doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.01.683
Šarūnė Magelinskaitė et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 116 (2014) 2936 – 2940
2937
adjustment at primary school in their own right, they are also linked to academic achievement. The importance of
anxiety for academic outcomes was demonstrated in the research by Duchesne et al., (2008), which showed that
high anxiety in elementary school predicted non-completion of high school. Galla and Wood (2012) suggest that
ability to down-regulate excessive anxiety might help to free up working memory resources required for academic
work, which in turn might facilitate learning and performance. As social relationships constitute a significant source
of anxiety and insofar in previous studies social competence has been found to be related to better relationships with
both peers and teachers, this provides grounds for our 1st hypothesis that there is a negative relationship between
social competence and school anxiety of primary school pupils.
Berhenke et al. (2011) points out that motivation is related to academic achievement even when controlling for
IQ. Motivation can lead children to pursue opportunities to learn, which is likely to result in increased effort, more
practice, faster skill development and ultimately higher achievement (Aunola et al., 2006). Research on motivation
in primary school children is rare, which may be due to difficulties in assessing motivation at this age (Berhenke et
al., 2011). The links between social competence and learning motivation in primary school have never been studied.
As academic motivation has been shown to have inverse links with anxiety in both primary and middle school
samples (Gottfried, 1985, 1990), we hypothese that there is a positive relationship between learning motivation and
social competence of primary school pupils.
2. Method
2.1. Participants and procedure
Participants were 124 children (47 boys and 77 girls) attending the 1st grade (modal age 7 years) and the 2nd grade
(modal age 8 years) at a primary school in the second largest city in Lithuania. Recruitment of subjects entailed
participating class teachers in distributing information letters and consent forms to parents via children’s take-home
folders. Overall participation rate was 78%. Children were not excluded based on ethnicity, age, socioeconomic
background, or any other factor; all students were eligible to participate in the study.
Class teachers completed questionnaires assessing social competence and school anxiety of participating pupils.
Children completed a questionnaire assessing their learning motivation. As all children had sufficient reading skills
and attention spans to answer the necessary number of questions, written questionnaires were distributed to children
in small groups of up to 6 children in each. Children completed the questionnaire under supervision of the principal
investigator. It took about 20 minutes for children to complete the questionnaire.
2.2. Measures
2.2.1. Social competence
Teachers rated social competence of pupils on the 35-item Primary School Social Competence Scale (PSSCS)
developed for the present study. The scale was developed on the basis of three instruments: the Social-Emotional
Readiness Scale of the Early Development Instrument created by Janus and Offord (2007); Social Emotional School
Readiness Scale developed by Bustin (2007), and the Social Competence Inventory developed by Rydell et al.
(1997). While all of the aforementioned instruments overlap significantly, each tends to overlook some significant
aspects of social competence. Furthermore, when used with young children, some items tend to show the ceiling
effect and hence fail to differentiate between children with high and low social competence. Thus for the present
study we selected those items, which comprehensively cover all important aspects of social competence and do not
show the ceiling effect. Sample items are “Is able to find solutions or compromises when involved in a conflict”, “Is
liked by his/her peers”. Teachers were asked to score items on 6-point Likert scale (1 = very rarely to 6 = very
often). The 35-item instrument displayed excellent reliability (Cronbach α = 0.95).
2.2.2. School anxiety
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Šarūnė Magelinskaitė et al. / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 116 (2014) 2936 – 2940
School anxiety of children was measured by the School Anxiety Scale (SAS) developed by Lyneham et al.
(2008). This scale was completed by teachers. Results of a pilot study had shown that some items tend to show
ceiling effect, thus for the present study 12 out of the 16 original items were used. Sample items are “This child
speaks only when someone asks a question of him/her” and “This child worries what other people think of him/her”.
Items were rated on a 4-point Likert scale (1 = very rarely/never to 4 = very often). The scale had excellent
reliability (Cronbach α = 0.91).
2.2.3. Learning motivation
Learning motivation was measured using a scale created on the basis of the Elementary School Motivation Scale
(ESMS) developed by Guay et al. (2010). The original scale had 27 items assessing internal motivation, identified
regulation, and controlled regulation for reading, writing, and mathematics, but again our pilot study showed that a
significant number of items are affected by the ceiling effect. Removal of such items resulted in the 16-item scale.
Sample items are “I read even when I don’t have to” and “Writing interests me a lot”. Items were rated on a 3-point
Likert scale (1 = never to 3 = very often). The shortened version of the scale proved to be very reliable (Cronbach α
= 0.87).
3. Results
3.1. Descriptive statistics
Table 1 provides the means and standard deviations for the study variables. Independent samples t-tests revealed
no differences between girls and boys on school anxiety (t = -.204, p = .839), and learning motivation (t = -.678, p =
.500), but there was significant difference in social competence (t = -2.639, p = .01) – boys (M = 156.10, SD =
31.34) were significantly less socially competent than girls (M = 171.09, SD = 29.56). Thus, testing of hypotheses
involving social competence will be done separately for boys and girls.
Table 1. Descriptive statistics
Variables
Social competence
School Anxiety
Learning motivation
N
124
124
124
Minimum
95
12
21
Maximum
210
41
48
Mean
165.41
22.56
36.17
Standard Deviation
30.99
7.89
6.18
Testing of normality of variable distributions using one-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test revealed that
distribution of social competence (Z = 1.154, p = 0.139), school anxiety (Z = 1.182, p = 0.122), and learning
motivation (Z = 1.199, p = 0.113) were not significantly different from normal. Therefore, parametric tests may be
used for testing of the hypotheses.
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3.2. Relationships between social competence, learning motivation, and school anxiety
As a statistically significant difference in social competence scores between girls and boys was found,
correlations between social competence and other variables were computed separately for boys and girls. For both
genders there was a strong negative correlation between social competence and school anxiety (r = -.521, p < 0.001
for boys and r = -.507, p < 0.001 for girls). Total sample correlation was r = -.487, p < .001.
For girls social competence was also moderately related to learning motivation (r = .419, p<0.001). For boys this
correlation approached a moderate level, but did not reach statistical significance (r = .286, p = .052). Total sample
correlation between social competence and learning motivation was moderate (r = .382, p < 0.001).
Finally, a moderate negative correlation (r = -.207, p = .025) between learning motivation and school anxiety was
found in the total sample. This indicated that higher school anxiety was linked to lower learning motivation.
4. Discussion
Results of the study supported both hypotheses. As predicted, social competence of primary school children was
inversely related with school anxiety. This link was both highly significant and strong. This result is similar to that
obtained by Galla and Wood (2012), who found that emotional self-efficacy moderates anxiety-related impairment
on a math test. Galla and Wood believe that conviction of one’s competency might translate into the use of effective
coping strategies, which in turn reduces the cognitive load placed on working memory, thereby enabling more
processing resources to handle academic work.
Also as predicted, there a positive correlation between social competence and learning motivation was found.
This relationship was highly significant and moderately strong for girls, but not for boys. We believe that this gender
difference in significance of the relationship may be due to a small sample size. The relationship between social
competence and learning motivation may be in part explained by the negative correlation between learning
motivation and school anxiety – social competence may act to reduce anxiety and lowered anxiety may enhance
learning motivation.
Viewed in light of the earlier results obtained by Magelinskaitė (2011), this result suggests interesting ideas
concerning further research into the mechanisms whereby social competence is linked to academic achievement. It
might be predicted that social competence results in better social relationships in school, which in turn reduce school
anxiety and increase learning motivation and thus provides for better academic performance. Further longitudinal
research is necessary to test this prediction.
These findings must be considered in light of several limitations. First, the size of our sample was relatively
small, which in case of relationship between social competence and learning motivation leaves a room for some
speculation concerning significance of the results. Second, the cross-sectional nature of data does not allow for any
conclusions concerning causality of the identified significant relationships. Third, participants in our sample was
quite a homogenous group of urban white children, which may potentially limit generalization of findings to other
populations.
Despite these limitations, we showed that social competence is linked to important non-academic indicators of
adjustment in primary school. This study offers useful data for directing future research investigating importance of
social competence for adjustment of primary school pupils.
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