The purpose of this study was to identify the traits of tree-drawing in accordance with the contentment of school life in Korean-American juveniles. The study participants were total of 178 teenagers (116 students in 1.5 generation and 62 students in ...
The purpose of this study was to identify the traits of tree-drawing in accordance with the contentment of school life in Korean-American juveniles. The study participants were total of 178 teenagers (116 students in 1.5 generation and 62 students in 2nd generation of emigration) who attend a Korean school in California and are in between 13 and 18 years old.
The Tree-Drawing test was analyzed by the revised standard based on 'position' and 'essential constituent' (Buck, 1948) and 'standard of details' (Marzolf & Kirchner, 1970), and the Assessment of Contentment of School Life(Kim, 1988) which was revised version of the Assessment of Contentment of School Life (Ryu, 1982) were applied. These processes were taken by each group of 15 or 18 students. While the Tree-Drawing test was classified into 'position', 'essential constituent', and 'details' items, the Assessment of Contentment of School Life was classified into 'general school life', 'general class', 'instructor', 'relationship among students', 'physical environment in school', and 'school activities' items. The multivariate analysis and correlation analysis was taken to study the traits of relations between the sub-items.
The study results are as following,
First, in school-life contentment by drawing 'position', contentment was high in orderly when a tree was at the center(the most), right, left, and upper in a paper.
Second, in school-life contentment by 'essential constituent', the wider and longer trunk was, the more contentment was. The branch types or (no) existence of leaves, however, had no significant effect on contentment.
Third, relations between drawing 'details' and school-life contentment differed according to each detail. The wider and longer the crown of a tree was, the more contentment was. In the relations between 'school activities' item and the crown, contentment was high in orderly when there is only the crown, the branch and the crown, and the branch. Yet there were no correlation between school-life contentment and the formation of the crown and (no) existence of a knot, a fruit, and a root.
Fourth, in contentment according to emigration generations, the students of 1.5 generation felt more contentment than those of 2nd generation.
Fifth, girls felt more contentment than boys in school.
Finally, the contentment was felt differently by ages: in the age of 13-15, grades become higher and the feeling gets lower, in the age of 16, the feeling gets higher, but, in the age of 17 or higher, the feeling gets lower again.
According to the study results, there are some correlations between the traits of tree-drawing and school-life contentment. In addition, The counselor and teacher have a meaning as a step to understand Korean-American juveniles' school life.