The Effects of Mental Health, Motivation, and Learning Strategies on High School Students’ Grades During Covid-19

Learning, motivation, and strategies are critical for high school students’ academic attainment and success. With the onset of the unprecedented COVID-19 global pandemic in the past three years, high school students have experienced pandemic-related anxiety, depression, and stress. All of these may adversely impact their learning motivation; and subsequently, require students to adjust their learning strategies to cope with the changes in their learning environments, such as differing course modalities and social distancing policies. The existing literature has been focusing on college students’ learning in response to the pandemic. Adolescents are even more vulnerable to environmental changes and are easily prone to mental health challenges due to the physical and physiological changes that occur during this developmental stage. However, little is known regarding the impact of the COVID-19 global pandemic on high school students’ mental well-being, motivation, and learning strategies. Therefore, the present study sought to disentangle the complex relationship among those factors during the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 96 high school students who took distance learning courses during the pandemic in Taiwan fully completed the survey. The survey included demographic items, Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS21), selected MSLQ subscales, and their expected final grades. A structural equation model was conducted. Results indicated that high school students’ mental health directly impacted their levels of motivation, which then impacted their levels of learning strategies used, and ultimately influenced their expected final grades during the pandemic. It is suggested here that mental health support is critical to help students during these challenging times and to facilitate their learning.