School Adjustment in High School Students: The Role of Socio-Emotional Competencies and Personality Traits
Keywords:
School adjustment, socioemotional competencies, personality, Covitality, educational guidance, school well-beingAbstract
This work analyzes the relationship between socio-emotional competencies, personality traits, and school adjustment in adolescents, assessed through the School Life subscale of the Kiddo-KINDL. A non-experimental, descriptive, cross-sectional, and correlational design was employed, involving a sample of 306 students aged between 12 and 16 years. The instruments used included the Kiddo-KINDL, the Social Emotional Health Survey–Secondary (SEHS-S) to assess socioemotional competencies based on the Covitality model, and the Ten-Item Personality Inventory for Children and Adolescentes (TIPI-CA) to evaluate personality traits according to the Big Five model.. Results obtained through correlational analyses and hierarchical multiple regression indicated that competencies such as self- belief and life engagement, along with the trait of conscientiousness, were significant predictors of school adjustment. Gender showed an initial influence, but it was absorbed by psychological variables in the full model. These findings reinforce the importance of implementing socio-emotional intervention programs and strengthening personal assets to improve adolescents' quality of life and academic success. The study highlights the need to integrate the promotion of socio-emotional well-being into educational guidance as a key element of the teaching-learning process. Additionally, the study acknowledges its limitations and proposes future research directions to further explore school adjustment and its relationship with psychological and contextual variables.
Downloads
References
Ato, M., López, J. J., & Benavente, A. (2013). Un sistema de clasificación de los diseños de investigación en psicología. Anales de Psicología, 29(3), 1038– 1059. https://doi.org/10.6018/analesps.29.3.178511
Cohen, J. (2006). Social, emotional, ethical, and academic education: Creating a climate for learning, participation, and democracy. Harvard Educational Review, 76(2), 201–237. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.76.2.j44854x1524644vn
Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning. (2020). What is SEL?
https://casel.org/what-is-sel/
Denham, S. A., & Brown, C. (2010). “Plays nice with others”: Social-emotional learning and academic success. Early Education and Development, 21(5), 652–680. https://doi.org/10.1080/10409289.2010.497450
Duckworth, A. L., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2005). Self-discipline outdoes IQ in predicting academic performance of adolescents. Psychological Science, 16(12), 939– 944. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2005.01641.x
Durlak, J. A., Weissberg, R. P., Dymnicki, A. B., Taylor, R. D., & Schellinger, K. B. (2011). The impact of enhancing students’ social and emotional learning: A meta-analysis of school-based universal interventions. Child Development, 82(1), 405–432. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01564.x
Elias, M. J., Zins, J. E., Weissberg, R. P., Frey, K. S., Greenberg, M. T., Haynes, N. M., & Shriver, T. P. (1997). Promoting social and emotional learning: Guidelines for educators. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Furlong, M. J., Dowdy, E., Moore, S., & Bertling, J. (2014). Social Emotional Health Survey-System (SEHS-S): A framework for monitoring the social-emotional well-being of students. Contemporary School Psychology, 18(4), 206–214. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40688-014-0025-2
García-Bacete, F. J., & Rosel, J. (2017). Evaluación de la aceptación social: Escalas de nominaciones y valoraciones sociométricas en el aula. Revista de Psicodidáctica, 22(1), 72–80. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psicod.2016.09.001
Greenberg, M. T., Weissberg, R. P., O’Brien, M. U., Zins, J. E., Fredericks, L.J., Resnik, H., & Elias, M. J. (2003). Enhancing school-based prevention and youth development through coordinated social, emotional, and academic learning. American Psychologist, 58(6–7), 466–474. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003- 066X.58.6-7.466
Gosling, S. D., Rentfrow, P. J., & Swann, W. B. Jr. (2003). A very brief measure of the Big-Five personality domains. Journal of Research in Personality, 37, 504–528. 10.1016/s0092-6566(03)00046-1
Gutiérrez, M., & Tomás, J. M. (2019). Relaciones entre competencias socioemocionales, rendimiento académico y calidad de vida en adolescentes. Revista de Psicodidáctica, 24(2), 98–106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psicod.2019.02.001
Harter, S. (2012). The construction of the self: Developmental and sociocultural foundations (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
Ladd, G. W., Herald-Brown, S. L., & Reiser, M. (2008). Does chronic classroom peer rejection predict the development of children’s classroom participation? Child Development, 79(4), 1001–1015. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467- 8624.2008.01172.x
Liu, J. J., Wang, X., Wang, Y., Leung, A., & Xu, H. (2020). Social and emotional learning (SEL) and student outcomes: A meta-analysis. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 49(7), 1383–1399. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-020-01285-4
McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T. (1997). Personality trait structure as a human universal. American Psychologist, 52(5), 509–516. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003- 066X.52.5.509
Merrell, K. W., & Gueldner, B. A. (2010). Social and emotional learning in the classroom: Promoting mental health and academic success. Guilford Press.
Piqueras, J. A., Rodriguez-Jimenez, T., Marzo, J. C., Rivera-Riquelme, M., Martinez- Gonzalez, A. E., Falco, R., & Furlong, M. J. (2019). Social Emotional Health Survey-Secondary (SEHS-S): A Universal Screening Measure of Social- Emotional Strengths for Spanish-Speaking Adolescents. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 16(24), 4982. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16244982
Poropat, A. E. (2009). A meta-analysis of the Five-Factor Model of personality and academic performance. Psychological Bulletin, 135(2), 322–338. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014996
Ravens-Sieberer, U., & Bullinger, M. (1998). Assessing health-related quality of life in children and adolescents: Some methodological considerations. Quality of Life Research, 7(5), 389–398. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008853819715
Roeser, R. W., Eccles, J. S., & Sameroff, A. J. (2000). School as a context of early adolescents’ academic and social-emotional development: A summary of research findings. The Elementary School Journal, 100(5), 443–471. https://doi.org/10.1086/499650
Valiente, C., Lemery-Chalfant, K., Swanson, J., & Reiser, M. (2021). Self-regulation and academic achievement: An integrative review. Educational Psychologist, 56(2), 105–123. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2021.1889402
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Revista de Formación en Educación
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
