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Teacher Expectations, Social-emotional Skills and Academic Achievement in Primary School: The Role of Mediator
This study investigates the mediating role of primary school students’ socioemotional skills, such as goal-achievement skills, collaboration, and emotional management in the relationship between teachers’ expectations and students’ academic achievement. The study is based on data from the START-PROGRESS longitudinal study, which includes Russian schoolchildren and teachers. Structural equation modelling was used to model complex relationships between variables, including direct and indirect pathways of effect. The findings revealed that among the three socioemotional skills examined, only goal-achievement skills weakly mediated the relationship between teachers’ expectations and students’ academic achievement in the middle of primary school, and only in mathematics.