An examination of academic coping among Taiwanese adolescents

Abstract

The author explored the relations among Taiwanese eighth-grade students` satisfactions of the basic psychological needs (i.e., the needs for competence, relatedness, and autonomy), engagement versus disengagement coping with academic stress, self-regulated learning, and academic burnout. Three hundred and ninety-six eighth-grade Taiwanese students completed a self-reported survey assessing the variables described above. Findings of regression analyses indicated that the satisfactions of Taiwanese adolescents’ basic psychological needs were the key factors determining their academic coping. The types of coping they adopted were found to be associated with their self-regulated learning and academic burnout. Further, results of multivariate analysis of covariance showed that even after controlling for the effects of the fulfillment of the basic psychological needs, students employing engagement coping reported significantly higher levels of self-regulated learning along with lower levels of burnout than did their counterparts using disengagement coping. Implications for educational practices are discussed.