Middle School Students' Trajectory of Cooperative Competence: Contemporaneous and Lagged Effects of Parenting Behavior, Peer Relationships, and Teacher-Student Relationships

Purpose: This study investigated students‘ trajectory of cooperative competence in middle school and examined if time-varying covariates - parenting behavior, peer relationships, teacher-student relationships - predict contemporary and 1-year lagged cooperative competence. Methods: samples from 2,590 seventh-grade students drawn from the Korean Children and Youth Panel Survey 2018, Second-Order Latent Growth Modeling analysis were examined to ascertain to what extent the time-varying covariates (parenting behavior, peer relationship and teacher-student relationships) have on contemporaneous and lagged effects. Results: First, the cooperative competence of middle school students decreased over time, and the decrease rates were steeper for those who showed a higher level of initial cooperative competence. Second, the contemporaneous effects of three time-varying covariates on cooperative competence were significant, while only peer and student-teacher relationships were found to have lagged effects. Conclusion: The result of this study suggests the importance of positive relationships with parents, peers and teachers for the development of cooperative competence and calls for future interventions to promote students‘ cooperative competence.