The role of interpersonal relationships with peers and with teachers in students’ academic achievement

(1) Feelings of rejection, the lack of social support and dissatisfaction of social needs influence academic motivation and performance in school; students feeling lonely in the classroom are more likely to give up in learning situations and have a higher rate of school drop-out. (2) Students’ academic achievement and their choice of peer groups are related; students having similar achievement strivings tend to form friendships and peer groups. (3) Peers also act as models of appropriate academic, as well as social behavior. Recently, the researchers in the field of academic motivation started to be increasingly oriented to the investigation of the effect of social and emotional factors on academic motivation and achievement. Numerous authors (e.g. Dweck, 1996; Weiner, 1996; Wentzel, 1996a) stress that in the past, academic achievement and social motivation were studied separately and that the reciprocal interaction between the two constructs was not taken into consideration. This also holds true for the research in school context where the relation between academic and social factors in students has been investigated only recently. Two most frequent and important forms of social relations that students form and maintain in school are relations to teachers and to peers. In the next part of the article, the importance of the two forms of social relations is discussed in detail.