Parent–teacher support congruence and adolescents’ academic well-being: a response surface analysis

Background Parental support and teacher support are usually studied as separate predictors of adolescents’ academic functioning, which leaves open whether the correspondence between these two resources carries its own significance. Drawing on ecological systems theory, developmental assets theory, and person–environment fit perspectives, this study examined how the joint configuration of parental and teacher support is associated with adolescents’ academic well-being, and whether expectancy-value motivation statistically accounts for part of this association. Methods Participants were 2,492 junior high school students (1,266 girls, 1,224 boys; M age = 13.04, SD = 0.88) nested within 101 classrooms in China. Multilevel polynomial regression with response surface analysis (RSA) was estimated in 20 multiply imputed datasets. The random-effects structure was selected by likelihood-ratio tests; the retained model, which included a random classroom intercept and a random slope for teacher support, was used for all surface parameters, figures, and mediation analyses. Surface parameters were tested directly, using standard errors from the pooled covariance matrix and a classroom-level cluster bootstrap. Results Motivation and well-being were higher when parental and teacher support were jointly high than when both were low (congruence-line slopes a 1 = 0.65 and 0.69). The direction of incongruence mattered: at the same average level of support, adolescents whose parental support exceeded their teacher support reported lower motivation and well-being than adolescents with the reverse pattern. For academic well-being, but not for motivation, the surface also curved downward along the line of incongruence ( a 4 = −0.15), indicating a mismatch penalty whose peak was shifted toward higher teacher than parental support. Expectancy-value motivation statistically transmitted the level and directional components of the surface, but not the mismatch penalty. Conclusion The level of support, and support from teachers relative to parents, were more consistent correlates of adolescents’ motivation and academic well-being than congruence as such. Because the data are cross-sectional self-reports, the indirect effects are statistical associations, not evidence of a causal mechanism.