Post-Traumatic Stress Symptoms, Motivational Quality and Academic Performance Among Türkiye-Born and Early-Arriving Syrian-Background Students: The Moderating Role of Academic Language Proficiency

Many Syrian students in Turkish schools were born in Türkiye or arrived before school entry, yet their post-traumatic stress and its links with schooling are poorly documented. In this observational two-contact study, we examined whether post-traumatic stress symptoms were associated with academic performance among 407 Türkiye-born or early-arriving (at or before age five) Syrian-background students in grades 5–12 (mean age 13.84 years), recruited non-randomly across eight provinces; whether indirect associations through autonomous motivation and amotivation were evident; and whether academic Turkish proficiency conditioned the motivation–performance path. Symptoms and motivation were measured at first contact; first-term grade averages were obtained approximately ten weeks later. Within this recruited sample, 38.6% scored at or above the CRIES-13 screening cut-off. Symptom severity was inversely associated with performance (β = −0.26), net of depressive and anxiety symptoms and recorded absence. Under an assumed ordering in which symptoms precede motivation, the indirect coefficients through autonomous motivation and amotivation represented 42.7% of the modelled total association, with a direct association remaining. In an exploratory analysis, the indirect association through autonomous motivation was weaker among students with the lowest academic Turkish proficiency (index of moderated mediation = −0.029, 95% CI −0.054 to −0.008). Because symptoms and motivation were measured concurrently, general cognitive ability was not assessed, and sampling was non-probability, these associations are hypothesis-generating and call for longitudinal and intervention research.