Peer counseling might lead adolescents’ concerning to a wrong way. Thus, as an alternative, it is possible to prevent several problems that counselors adequately intervene in the early stages in which they listen adolescents’ various concerns. For...
Peer counseling might lead adolescents’ concerning to a wrong way. Thus, as an alternative, it is possible to prevent several problems that counselors adequately intervene in the early stages in which they listen adolescents’ various concerns. For that reason, this research conducted a peer counselor training for elementary school students who were in the early stage of adolescence.
These days, in Korea, due to various socio-cultural desires developed by rapid economic growth so far, various issues hard to cope with have risen among each generation. Hence, in this study. The elements of peer counseling training that affect self-esteem and interpersonal skill of elementary students were analyzed to solve various psychological problems to be provided as the basic data for desirable school life of elementary students.
As for study subjects and methods, 34 male and female students of elementary school located in Busan city were divided into experiment group and control group, and self-esteem test and interpersonal skill test were conducted. For 12 weeks, the tests were done again for both groups with experiment group receiving peer counselor training program composed of 12 sessions, and control group receiving no training at all As for data analysis. Frequency analysis and paired t-test for average and standard deviation were conducted with the use of SAS 9.3 software.
As a result, the self-esteem of the study subjects, 2.58±0.29, showed significant improvement after peer counselor training program, and interpersonal skill also made significant improvement from 2.35±0.73 to 3.17±0.73. Also in the average comparison analysis of the sub-domains of self-esteem and interpersonal skill, the majority of the experiment group showed significant difference, but the control group no significant difference.
In conclusion, peer counselor training was found effective in improving the self-esteem and interpersonal skill of elementary students, so education programs of well-organized support environment for elementary students like peer counselor training will be required soon in many schools.