Abstract

School environment is associated with ego strength and hostility, while perceived parenting modifies the relationship between ego strength and hostility.  School Connectedness Scale, The Strategy and Attribution Questionnaire, The Parental Bonding Inventory, Barron’s Ego Strength Scale, and The Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory were used for assessing school environment, students' achievement strategies, perceived parenting, ego strength, and hostility. A structural equational model was administered to investigate the mediation effect of perceived parenting. The findings indicated that school environment was significantly associated with ego strength B = 0.28, p< 0.001, and hostility B = 0.34, p< 0.001. Perceived parenting mediates the relationship between ego strength B = 0.375, p< 0.001, and hostility B = 0.136, p< 0.05. Perceived parenting plays a crucial role in student achievement strategies and developing an impactful ego strength and helps reduce hostile behaviors while positive parenting modifies the association of ego strength and hostility in the school environment. 

Key Words

School Environment, Student Achievement Strategies, Ego Strength, Hostility and Perceived Parenting

Introduction

The school environment is an essential process in teaching and learning.  It plays an important role in achievement (Fu et al., 2021; Hamlin, 2020; Johnson Spears, 2018; Smith & Shouppe, 2018).  A healthy school environment promotes and encourages students' cognitive and behavioral development (Johnson Spears, 2018).  The environment where every student's strategy is to dare portray actions that endorse success and good academic grades (Daily et al., 2019; Khattak & Ahmad, 2018; Darling-Hammond & Cook-Harvey, 2018).  Academic achievement is exchanged creatively into problem-solving skills (Thomsen et al., 2022).  Some contributing factors like decision-making, and strong leadership skills are the significant cognitive strategies that help promote success (Day et al., 2018; Dicke et al., 2020). 

Recent studies elaborated ego strength as an important skill that efficiently deals with the school environment (Fu et al., 2021; Hamlin, 2020).  Possessing too much or too little ego strength can become too obdurate, steadfast, and rigid (Bear et al., 2018; Brunner et al., 2017; Dicke et al., 2020).  Ego strength also assists students in sustaining enthusiastic soundness and coping with inside and outside stress (Reaves et al., 2018; Yang et al., 2018).  Therefore, this study emphasizes that a healthier school environment can enhance ego strength and improve school pupils' performance.

In schools, despite the fact, that risk-taking behavior is characterized as memorizing something modern in questionable circumstances and may lead to success or disappointment (Pollak, Dekkers, Shoham, & Huizenga, 2019).  However, it tends to form forecasts and take chances within the nearness of a penalty/failure within the classroom (Katsantonis, 2019; Reaves et al., 2018; Yang et al., 2018; Zakariya, 2020).  Students' risk-taking is additionally a degree of their imagination.  Risk-taking enhances students' learning and is a distinctive scholastic choice that determines hopefulness (Reaves et al., 2018; Yang et al., 2018). 

Hostile behavior portrays the chance to try risky things that promote torment, hate, fear, and pity, however, alters and cultivates learning (Thomsen et al., 2022).  Family and school environment empowers students' achievement by improving problem-solving skills (Aldridge & McChesney, 2018; Bear et al., 2018).  Every family system has child-rearing styles that include authoritarian, lenient, and definitive (Saleem, Mahmood, & Daud, 2017; Altaf et al, 2021).  Perceived parenting style develops adoring circumstances that improve the self-certainty of a child in a learning grip (Aldridge & McChesney, 2018; Dorio et al., 2019; Fu et al., 2021; Pollak et al., 2019).  Positive instead of reformatory parenting has been significantly related to children’s achievement in school (Ahmed, Qiang, & Abdullah, 2024).  Unfriendly parenting indent to control and learning in particular settings by compromising their capacity to focus (Aldridge & McChesney, 2018; Dorio et al., 2019; Fu et al., 2021).   Therefore, an attempt to examine the relationship between perceived parenting style, school environment, hostility, and ego strength has been made in this study.  Hence, we hypothesized that Perceived parenting style mediates between school environment and student achievement strategies, ego strength, and hostility.  

Conceptual Framework

Figure 1



Method:

Population and Sampling

A public sector high school populace from the Peshawar region, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan was included in this study. The sample comprised 136 females (46%) and approximately 157 males (53%) a total of 293 individuals were included.  Overall n = 400 high secondary school students were surveyed out of which 7 participants did not comply.    

Measures:

School Connectedness Scale (SCS)

The School Connectedness Scale was used to collect information regarding the school environment. The scale consisted of three items. The three items scale was adapted from Resnick et al., (1997). Responses are taken on a five-point scale ranging from 1 = never to 5 = always. Items of the scale are, I feel close to people at school; I feel like I am part of this school and I am happy to be at school. The scale has a Cronbach's ? ranging from 0.78-0.93 (Lohmeier, & Lee, 2011). 

The Strategy and Attribution Questionnaire (SAQ)

the strategy and attribution questionnaire (SAQ) was utilized to investigate student achievement strategies.  The questionnaire consists of 10 items and the responses are rated on a 4-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = Strongly agree to 4 = Strongly disagree. The Sub-scale, the success expectation scale (optimism) measures were utilized for people's expectation to succeed (a 6-item scale), and the task-avoidance scale measures preventing carrying out a task (a 5-item scale).  Previous data show the Cronbach ? for success expectation on measurements 1, 2, and 3 as 0.78, 0.81, and 0.79, and for task-avoidance on measurements 1, 2, and 3 as 0.72, 0.78, and 0.82, respectively (Nurmi, Salmela-Aro, & Haavisto, 1995). 




Parental Bonding Inventory (PBI)

Perceived parenting was measured with Parental Bonding Inventory (PBI).  The scale consists of 25 questions identifying care and overprotection of their parents.  There are 12 items for care and 13 for overprotection.  Participants’ responses were noted on a Likert scale of 4 points ranging from 0 for Very Unlike to 3 for Very Like. Related previous studies on the inventory demonstrated an overall Cronbach’s ? of 0.81, for dimension Care 0.89 and Overprotection 0.68 (Parker, Tupling & Brown, 1979)

Barron’s Ego Strength Scale (BES)

The psychological assessment tool was developed

by Frank Barron. The scale consists of 68 items and it measures ego strength or the resilience of an individual's personality structure. The scale investigates someone's ability to cope, under pressure stability, and effective emotional management. The items are rated on a dichotomous True/ False format.  The scale has been validated in many languages since its development in 1953. The previous data reported Cronbach's ? ranging from 0.70 to 0.90 (Barron, 1953). The scale can be utilized in both clinical and personality assessments in personality Psychology. 




The Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory (BDHI)

The inventory consists of 75 items. All items are responded to in a true-false format. The scale includes eight clinical factors subscales. The subscales of the inventory consist of assault, hostility, indirect, irritability, negativism, resentment, suspicion, verbal hostility, and guilt.  We utilized the first factors containing items of assault, irritability, and verbal aggression which is called Overt Expression of Hostility (Buss & Durkee, 1957). The Cronbach’s alpha of BDHI ranges from 0.57 and 0.78 (Bishop & Quah, 1998; Tangney, Wagner, Fletcher, & Gramzow, 1992).  However, the previous data demonstrated a Cronbach’s ? of .76 for overt hostility subscale (Bendig, 1962). 

Data Analysis and Procedure

Data analysis was done through SPSS. All the questionnaires were checked and data from the questionnaires was entered into SPSS data sheet. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was administered using mediation analysis specifically to examine the relationship between school environment, student achievement strategies, ego strength, hostility, and perceived parenting style.

Results

Table 1



The above-mentioned table (1) shows the demographic data pertinent to individuals who are included in the sample. The table denotes a total of 293, out of which 157 (53.6%) were male respondents and 136 (46.4%) were female respondents showing the percentages of 53.6 percent and 46.4%.  While most of the respondents were in the age range of 13 to 15 years (42.3%).

		n	%
Gender	Male	157	53.6
	Female	136	46.4
	Total	293	100.0
Age	<12 Year	89	30.4
	13 - 15 Years	124	42.3
	16 - 18 Years	67	22.9
	>18 Years	13	4.4
	Total	293	100.0

Table 2



The above table shows the descriptive statistics of the study. Descriptive statistics unfold the main and prime purpose for which the data has been accumulated.  The first column shows the number of respondents which were 293. The second column unveils the minimum and maximum statistics which are 1 and 5 for all the variables.  Mean statistics of 3 (SD, 1 for all the scales) and for the school environment, perceived parenting, ego strength, and hostility except for student achievement (below 3).  The skewness underlies between a normal acceptable range of -1 to +1 which proves the normality of the data.

	N	Mean	Std. Deviation	Skewness
	Statistic	Statistic	Statistic	Statistic	Std. Error
School Environment	293	3.39	1.1	-.382	.142
Perceived Parenting	293	3.32	1.1	-.393	.142
Student Achievement	293	2.82	1.3	.150	.142
Ego Strength	293	3.36	1.2	-.416	.142
Hostility	293	3.36	1.3	-.430	.142
Valid N (listwise)	293

Table 3



Structural equational modeling (SEM) utilizing regression analysis is presented in Table 3.  School environment and student achievement have no direct effect B = -0.02, p= 0.835.  The school environment has a direct effect on ego strength B = 0.28, p< 0.001.  School environment has a direct effect on hostility B = 0.34, p< 0.001.  Perceived parenting has a significant indirect relationship with the school environment and student achievement B = 0.173, p< 0.05.  Perceived parenting was significantly associated with the school environment and ego strength B = 0.375, p< 0.001.  However, perceived parenting has a significant indirect association with the school environment and hostility B = 0.136, p< 0.05.

	Path		B	S.E.	C.R.	P
Perceived Parenting	ß	School environment	0.55	0.05	11.06	<0.001
Student Achievement	ß	School environment	-0.02	0.08	-0.21	0.835
Ego Strength	ß	School environment	0.28	0.07	4.79	<0.001
Hostility	ß	School environment	0.34	0.07	5.33	<0.001
School environmentà Perceived parenting	à	Student Achievement	0.18	0.09	2.52	0.012
School environmentàPerceived parenting	à	Ego strength	0.38	0.07	6.57	<0.001
School environmentàPerceived parenting	à	Hostility	0.14	0.08	2.16	0.031

Discussion

This research investigates the role of perceived parenting in the school environment on students' achievement and ego strength.  The findings indicated that the school environment has an insignificant effect on school achievement.  In Pakistan, students are often discouraged from taking bold steps and actions that can enhance their work performance (Yang et al., 2018; Zakariya, 2020; Zong et al., 2017).  Seldom being connected to the school environment hinders their activities and achievements (Jaureguizar et al., 2018; Katsantonis, 2019; Kosterelioglu, 2018).  Strategies that trigger achievement skills are not well practiced in schools (Jaureguizar et al., 2018; Katsantonis, 2019; Kosterelioglu, 2018).  

The findings further indicated that the school environment was significantly related to ego strength.  Children who received parental support may have an elevated ego strength compared to those receiving ineffective support.  Ego strength and hostility on the other hand are the admiring junctures to improve the student's achievements (Sedova et al., 2019; Thomsen et al., 2022).  Similarly, the school environment also has a significant effect on hostility.  Students will be encouraged more to take risks that can add up to their skills and grades.  Perceived parenting may decrease the levels of hostility and strengthen achievement strategies that affect a student's self-confidence and daily proficiency in school (Cohen et al., 2009; Haynes et al., 1997; Maass et al., 2019; S. Nabizadeh et al., 2019).  

Previous studies suggested that reformatory parenting is likely to undermine control over children in particular settings by compromising their capacity to focus (Hamlin, 2020; Maass et al., 2019; S. Nabizadeh et al., 2019).  However, in contrast, children are unable to be over-aroused as a result of parent-child interactions and should be way better able to reply to parental endeavors to focus on their thoughts and behavior (Day et al., 2018; Dicke et al., 2020; Hamlin, 2020).  Whereas previous research work portrays hostility as "the chance of trying something too dangerous” (Maass et al., 2019; S. Nabizadeh et al., 2019).  Moreover, children arrange messages to internalize parents’ requests for alluring behavior (i.e., hindering undesirable behavior and paying consideration), and control their emotions and behavior when surrounded by guardians (Day et al., 2018; Dicke et al., 2020).  




Implications

The study focuses on investigating the connection between school environment, ego strength, and strategies for achievement to improve the success rates of school students.  Thus, improving ego strength and achievement strategies may reduce hostility in high school pupils. The students are likely to develop more healthy coping mechanisms, if they focus on ego strength and achievement strategies, in turn, can also reduce hostile behavior among the students. It fosters a positive atmosphere also required to promote learning and personal growth.




Limitations and Future Research Indications

The present study further requires comparing public and private school students to identify the effects of perceived parenting on ego strengths and achievement strategies by taking a step to eradicate all the complications withstanding the achievement and growth of students.  Other than that, the sample size used in this study was limited because it was hard to reach the bulk of the population and target the higher secondary students in Pakistan.  Future research in this area is required to utilize a longitudinal approach targeting specific cities of Pakistan to investigate differences in perceived parenting on ego strengths and achievement and how it affects hostile behaviors. 

Conclusion

We investigated that Perceived parenting styles play a crucial role in student achievement strategies and developing an impactful ego strength and help in reducing hostile behaviors in attendees of high school.  The study also suggests that positive parenting modifies the association of ego strength and hostility in the school environment and further promotes good achievement strategies. 

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