The Impact of Peer Relationship on Child School Life Adjustment
The purpose of this study was to serve as a basis for children’s more successful adjustment to early school life, by examining the effect of peer relationship in middle childhood on ch...
The Impact of Peer Relationship on Child School Life Adjustment
The purpose of this study was to serve as a basis for children’s more successful adjustment to early school life, by examining the effect of peer relationship in middle childhood on child school life adjustment.
The peer relationship scale used in this study was Ladd, Kochenderfer and Coleman(1996)’s friendship perception scale adapted by Yoo Son Li(1999). This scale was modified to be easy for elementary school first graders to understand. In order to measure school life adjustment and its subfactors, the elementary school first grade adjustment to school life questionnaire for teacher assessment, which modified the questionnaire used in the studies by Hong Sang Im(1994), Kim Kyong Sil(1991) and Mon Pyong Soo(1991), was revamped again to suit elementary school children. The findings of this study were as below:
First, as a result of testing peer relationship by child characteristics, it’s found that the first-grade children investigated didn’t have a good peer relationship, and child characteristics didn’t make a significant difference. When school life adjustment was examined by child characteristics, the children were found to relatively well adjust themselves to school life, and their school life adjustment was significantly different according to gender. Finally, as a result of testing the influence of peer relationship on school life adjustment, the positive and negative characteristics of peer relationship appeared to give a big impact on their school life adjustment. The more positive peer relationship that included mutual help, mutual acknowledgement, mutual acceptance and mutual assertiveness was followed by better school adjustment. But stronger negative peer relationship that involved mutual exclusiveness or disagreement resulted in lower school life adjustment.
Studies on peer relationship that exerted a vital influence on children’s early school life adjustment had only focused on the concept or pattern, but there were few studies on how children’s early school life adjustment was affected by the characteristics of peer relationship. So academically, it’s needed to make a study of this approach. Though there were some limits in this study regarding instrumentation, under-represented sampling and method, this study might be meaningful in turning its attention to the influence of peer interaction on child school life adjustment to be of use for children’s better adjustment to early school life.