A cross-lagged study of psychosocial adaptation among students with visual impairments: Coping, self-esteem, and social integration.

Xie et al. (2022) tracked 214 middle-school students with visual impairments across one school year.

Every three months the kids filled out three short surveys: one on self-esteem, one on coping, and one on how included they felt at school.

The team used cross-lagged analysis to see which scores predicted changes in the others over time.

Kids who felt more included at school in the fall had higher self-esteem by winter.

Higher self-esteem then led to more active coping (like asking for help or solving problems) in the spring.

The chain only ran one way: coping did not predict later self-esteem, and self-esteem did not predict later social inclusion.

Sasson et al. (2022) showed we can raise social play for students with severe disabilities using peer-plus-video modeling at recess. Zhengli’s data say social inclusion boosts self-esteem, so pairing kids in recess games may start the same positive chain for visually impaired students.

Kose et al. (2025) found empathy and systemizing drive social skills in autistic teens. Zhengli shift the lens to self-esteem and coping in visually impaired teens, suggesting different populations may need different social-emotional entry points.

Cramm et al. (2009) found coping strategies predicted parent adjustment years later. Zhengli show the same construct matters for students, but self-esteem must come first; this extends the coping-adaptation link downward in age and into the student perspective.

You can’t directly teach self-esteem, but you can engineer inclusion. Seat visually impaired students near peer helpers, assign cooperative roles, and give shared goals. These small moves raise inclusion, which the data say will lift self-esteem and, in turn, active coping. Start inclusion routines early in the year; the boost shows up within one semester.