Gender differences in the impact of peer relationships on academic engagement among mathematically gifted adolescents

This study surveyed 410 mathematically gifted adolescents in two stages over a period of 3 months to examine the impact of peer relationships on academic engagement in regular classes. Multigroup invariance testing was employed to examine gender invariance, then partial least squares analysis was used to investigate the influence of peer relationships on dimensions of academic engagement and the associated gender differences. The results indicated that peer relationships impacted overall academic engagement and its four dimensions at different orders of magnitude according to gender. Furthermore, regression coefficient differences revealed a significant gender effect in the influence of peer relationships on cognitive engagement, with the influence on boys being significantly greater than that on girls. Therefore, enhancing peer relationships could be considered an evidence-based strategy. Attention should also be given to the comparative impact that peer relationships have on the dimensions of academic engagement among girls and boys.