This study is to check out actual conditions of adjustment to school lives of primary school children from multi-cultural families, and to find out the impacts of ecological variables on their adjustment to school lives. Further, this study is to sugg...
This study is to check out actual conditions of adjustment to school lives of primary school children from multi-cultural families, and to find out the impacts of ecological variables on their adjustment to school lives. Further, this study is to suggest a base for programs helping children from multi-cultural families to adjust to school lives and to grow into healthy citizens by considering the factors influencing their adjustment and resulting from the environment they face.
Study subjects were selected from three private and religious centers supporting foreign marriage immigrants located in Seoul, two in Kyun-gi and one in Jeon-buk regions. A questionnaire survey was conducted with the study subjects consisting of 298 mother-child pairs from multi-cultural families in 6 regions. The children studied were in their primary year 3, 4, 5 and 6.
The results of this study can be summarized as follows:
First, such organismic variables as gender, self-efficacy, satisfaction with appearance and linguistic inconvenience in conversation with parents were found to have influence on multi-cultural children's adjustment to school lives.
Second, as for microsystem variables, domestic and school environment variables were found to affect the children's adjustment to school lives. Domestic environment variables included maternal child-rearing attitudes, supports and linguistic skills, all of which were found to be important factors. In terms of school environment variables, social support of teachers and mates were also found to be important factors.
Third, such meso-system variables as mother-teacher and mother-friend relationships were found to influence multi-cultural children's adjustment to school.
Fourth, such exo-system variables as maternal use of child-rearing educational services or other institutional services for multi-cultural families were regarded influential in those children's adjustment to school lives.
Fifth, macro-system variable, or maternal perspectives on children in multi-cultural families were found to have effect on children's adjustment to school.
Sixth, microsystem variables were found to be most appropriate to explain the adjustment to school lives of children from multi-cultural families.
To sum up, based on the stepwise regression analysis of adjustment to school, it was found that among the sub-factors of self-efficacy, one organismic variable, or confidence; 8 microsystem variables as maternal inconvenience of Korean language, maternal receptive/rejective child-rearing attitudes, maternal autonomous/controlling rearing attitudes, maternal emotional/informative/economic supports, teacher's social support and school mate's social support; one exosystem variable, or child-rearing educational experience; and one macro-system variable, or children's sense of values were found to be the factors exerting influence on children's adjustment to school. In other words, microsystem variables including domestic and school environments were found to be most influential in the adjustment to school of children from a multi-cultural families.
Lastly, with respect to the most influential factor among the variables, the higher confidence and the more self-satisfactory appearance children from multi-cultural families had, the better the children were found to adjust to schools, and the less inconvenient the children felt about the language in conversation with parents and the less uncomfortable with Korean language a mother felt, the more easily the children were found to adjust to schools.