The purpose of this study is to understand influences of bibliotherapy on the self-efficacy and school adjustment of maladjusted middle school students and to seek bibliotherapy programs to help them build positive self-efficacy and desirable school a...
The purpose of this study is to understand influences of bibliotherapy on the self-efficacy and school adjustment of maladjusted middle school students and to seek bibliotherapy programs to help them build positive self-efficacy and desirable school adjustment.
For this study, a total of 32 maladjusted students of E Middle School in Gyeonggi Province were selected with the help of counseling and class teachers of the school and then were divided into two groups - 16 each - of control and experimental groups. 16 students under the experimental group were subject to a study to see " whether a bibliotherapy group counseling program led by a librarian teacher will have influence on the self-efficacy and school adjustment of maladjusted middle school students."
The General Self-efficacy Scale incorporating questionnaires studied and designed by Kim, Ah Young and Cha, Jeong Eun (1996) and then revised by Kim, Ah Young (1997) and the School Adjustment Scale produced by Kim, Yong Rae (2000) that is designed to measure middle school students' school adjustment at large were used to verify the study findings.
A bibliotherapy program was designed to meet the study objective by a researcher and reviewed by librarian teachers and experts, based on the 󰡔(For Bibliotheraphy) Situational Reading List: Teenagers․Children (2005)󰡕. Under the program, students were placed on bibliotherapy on a weekly basis for 13 weeks from June 20, 2008 to September 12, 2008 - 60 minutes per session.
In order to understand influence of the bibliotherapy, a t-test was performed by using the SPSS 12.0 (Ver.) for the comparison of pre- and post-test scores between experimental and control groups.
Findings of this study can be summarized as follows:
First, an experimental group that received bibliotherapy showed significant differences in self-efficacy pre- and post-test scores compared to a control group without bibliotherapy. In particular, significant differences were identified in subcategories of self-confidence and self-regulated efficacy while not in task difficulty preference.
Second, significant differences in school adjustment pre- and post-test scores were indicated by the experimental group that was subject to bibliotherapy. The differences are found in subcategories of school environment-related adjustment, school friends-related adjustment and school life-related adjustment while not in school teacher-related adjustment and school instruction-related adjustment.
Hence, a conceptual hypothesis 1 (the maladjusted middle school student group with bibliotherapy on self-efficacy will not show differences in the relevant test compared to the student group without bibliotherapy) and a conceptual hypothesis 2 (the maladjusted middle school student group with bibliotherapy on school adjustment will not show differences in the relevant test compared to the student group without bibliotherapy) were rejected. Also, a null hypothesis of operational hypothesis 1.1, hypothesis 1.2, hypothesis 2.1, hypothesis 2.4 and hypothesis 2.5 was rejected while not for null hypothesis of operational hypothesis 1.3, hypothesis 2.2 and hypothesis 2.3.
In conclusion, bibliotherapy has a statistically significant impact on the self-efficacy and school adjustment of maladjusted middle school students, especially in terms of subcategories of self-confidence, self-regulated efficacy, school environment-related adjustment, school friends-related adjustment and school life-related adjustment. This suggests that bibliotherapy is of help to enhance self-efficacy and school adjustment of students who participate in a bibliotherapy group counseling program. Therefore, bibliotherapy programs are required to be continuously studied and developed so that they can contribute to improving self-efficacy and school adjustment of students given that school maladjustment recently forms the biggest part of school withdrawal.
Key words: Bibliotherapy, maladjustment, self-efficacy, school adjustment