The purpose of this study was to examine the process of making close friends in elementary P.E. class. It's specifically meant to identify positive and negative factors affecting making good friends and to investigate what kinds of interacting activit...
The purpose of this study was to examine the process of making close friends in elementary P.E. class. It's specifically meant to identify positive and negative factors affecting making good friends and to investigate what kinds of interacting activities triggered the factors in P.E. class.
The subjects in this study were 32 students in a sixth-grade class in an elementary school tentatively named Daejeon heemang, who were selected by criterion-based sampling methods. They included 14 boys and 18 girls. Their P.E. classes were observed by this researcher from March to July, 2009, and an in-depth interview was conducted. The collected data were analyzed according to the framework of domain analysis and taxonomic analysis. As a result, there appeared positive and negative factors that affected making close friends in P.E. class, and what sorts of interacting activities caused the factors was confirmed. Besides, they were in conflicts while they made friends with one another, and what changes their use of conflicts-resolving strategies brought to their peer relationship was ascertained as well. The major findings of the study were as follows:
First, as for the factors of making good friends in P.E. class, the children were closer to those whom they were already acquainted with. They came to associate with those with whom they had been in the same class in the previous year, whom they met in same academies, whom they ordinarily mingled with due to living in the same region, and whose parents were on good terms with their parents. But in no case the boys and girls were in friendly relations with one another.
Second, in relation to the factors positively affecting making close friends, a variety of factors had a positive impact on that such as excellent motor skills, preference for the same sporting event, helpful- ness, leadership, activeness or good chemistry. There were some gaps according to gender in those factors. Given the characteristics of P.E. class such as physical activities, superb motor skills, active class participation and offering a helping hand exercised a great influence on making close friends. Some of the boys and girls associated with each other.
Third, the factors that negatively impacted on making good friends were thinking highly of oneself, neglecting others, unpleasant diction or behavior(use of abusive language, speaking in a commanding tone, teasing), use of power, extraordinary behavior or betraying. Those factors appeared in a similar way regardless of gender. The negative factors threw the children into mutual conflicts, and there was a change in their peer relationship while they tried to iron out the problems.
Finally, the factors that affected making good friends worked in the interaction process of different sorts of activities like mutual exchange of motor skills, making up a team(team identification) and matching. At the onset of the study, they got closer to one another while they exchanged their motor skills, but the influence of the motor skills factor got lower over time, and those who had good chemistry and who had something in common got to associate with each other. The students who had superb motor skills tried to help the others who didn't at first, but the former gradually got to speak to the latter in a commanding tone or to tease or neglect the latter, and mutual conflicts took place in that process.