The purpose of this study is to prove the extent to which participation of the middle school students in marathon has an effects on the development of sense of community and the change of their attitude. This is needed to present fundamental data and ...
The purpose of this study is to prove the extent to which participation of the middle school students in marathon has an effects on the development of sense of community and the change of their attitude. This is needed to present fundamental data and actual evidences for the study of what effects the students could have for their self-achievement through participation in marathon.
The subjects in this study were middle school students in S district in Dae-jeon metropolitan city, and among them 69 of male and 51 of female students were chosen in random. These 120 students were divided into 3 groups of 40 students and the first group was analysed for less than 2 months, the second one for extent 4 months, and the third one for more than 6 months.
To see if the participation in marathon have an influence on middle school students' self-achievement, questionnaires were utilized as a research tool. The questionnaire(Minjin,1986) consisted of 25 questions about bureaucratic characteristics and self-achievement designed after convergent opinions of 5 experts and passed through reliability test. Among 25 questions are 3 questions : 1 questions of demographic factors, 1 question of marathon practice length, 1 question of the participation in marathon and 18 questions : 4 questions of ability development of self-achievement, 4 of ability demonstration, 4 of ideal realization and 6 of intra-orientation, which is a total of 21 questions.
The questionnaires were distributed in person, answered in a self-evaluation way and then they were collected. Students who transferred to other schools or who were transferred from other schools were excluded and some of collected date which were not written or written inaccurately were also excluded. The data accurately written were separately treated and computerized by SPSS 12.0, statistics program according to the analysis purpose.
To see if the participation in marathon have an influence on middle school students' self-achievement, the mean and the standard deviation were calculated, the significance of difference was proved through t-test and one-way ANOVA, and Scheffe analysis was implemented as a posttest.
The findings of the study were as follows:
First, both male(pretest M=2.46 ⇒ past test M=2.73) and female students (pretest M=2.51 ⇒ past test M=2.70) found themselves to get better in terms of the means of their own self-achievement in the posttest than in the pretest, which the gap in means of male students(p<.002) was more significant than the one of female students(p>.070).
However, no statistically significant gap was found in the aspect of ability demonstration of males, but the statistically significant gap was found in the rest of the 4 factors. Also, no statistically significant gap was found in the aspect of self-achievement of females between pretest and posttest, but the statistically significant gap was found in the rest of the 4 factors.
Second, in terms of the period of practice, the group that practised for more than 6 months(pretest M=2.46 ⇒ past test M=3.01), the group for more than 4 months(pretest M=2.40 ⇒ past test M=2.87) and the group for more that 2 months (pretest M=2.19 ⇒ past test M=2.56) all had the result that the means of self-achievement of posttest(p<.000) were higher than pretest(p<.018). In the terms of the means of their own self-achievement, the statistically significant gap was more significant in the pretest than the posttest .
However, no statistically significant gap was found in the aspect of ability demonstration of self-achievement between pretest and posttest in terms of the period of practice, but the statistically significant gap was found in the rest of the 4 factors.
Given the findings of the study, the participation of middle school students in marathon may not affect their demonstration of abilities. However, the participation in marathon helps students develop the abilities to obtain knowledge and skills, realize their ideals by discovering their own goals or ideals, become self-oriented to be independent as well as it has a positive influence on development of self-identification, self-efficacy and self-achievement in their adolescence.