Identifying the Relationship Between Strength of School Social Support and Level of Hope in Children from Low-Income Families.

Background: Poverty's impact on children's academic outcome is a cause for concern in most urban Asian cities as education is viewed as one of the main channels of social mobility. Few studies examined how poor children's hope could be enhanced through school social support. Objective: This paper examines how children from low-income families' perceived frequencies and importance of social support from teachers and classmates, influence their levels of hope in academic achievement. Method: Utilizing a partially-mixed sequential design—first, with survey data from a larger study on low-income children (n = 513), this paper explores if perceived frequency of social support is associated with level of hope as well as the role of perceived importance in moderating the frequencies of school social support on sense of hope; second, to enrich the child-reported results, two in-depth focus group discussions with elementary school teachers (n = 10) were conducted. Results: Statistical analysis reveals that the frequency of social support from teachers and classmates is associated with the level of hope in low-income children. Furthermore, when teacher's support was rated important by children, there was a positive association between social support and hope. Integrating statistical results and qualitative insights, this paper extends extant literature on social support typologies with a novel category; 'support in providing opportunities for success'. Conclusion: This paper underscores the important role schools play as a source of social support for children. Such social support aids higher hope levels in low-income children which could translate into better academic outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]