Adolescence is an important period where individuals make new adaptation psychologically and physically, and to examine various factors having influence with respect to school adaptation, which is a reflection of family life and a foundation for futur...
Adolescence is an important period where individuals make new adaptation psychologically and physically, and to examine various factors having influence with respect to school adaptation, which is a reflection of family life and a foundation for future social adaptation, has significant meaning in the guidance of adolescents. The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of mother-child communication and ego-resiliency as perceived by adolescents in Korea on school adaptation and especially to check the difference due to age and gender, which were not considered in previous studies.
This study was conducted for elementary school 6th graders and high school 1st graders in Seoul and Kyeongki areas, and the measurement tool was survey on the scales of communication with parents, ego-resiliency and school adaptation. The scale of communication with parents includes open type and problem type and the scale of ego-resiliency includes human relation, vitality, emotion control, optimism and curiosity. The scale of school adaptation includes teacher, environment, class, living, and peer adaptation.
A total of 412 survey sheets were distributed for this study but, after excluding 26 respondents not residing with their mothers from this study, data for 386 respondents were used for analysis.
The hypothesis of this study is that mother-child communication, ego-resiliency and school adaptation show significant difference according to gender and age of the adolescents and that the more open the mother-child communication and the higher the level of ego-resiliency are, as perceived by the youths, the better the school adaptation is. T test, one-way analysis of variance, correlation analysis and multivariate analysis conducted to verify such hypothesis has shown the following. First, the type of mother-child communication according to gender and the level of ego-resiliency are shown not to be significant in the difference among groups, and in the level of school adaptation according to gender, male adolescents were higher in level than female adolescents.
Second, analysis of relationship among mother-child communication according to age, ego-resiliency and school adaptation has shown that the level of mother-child communication for elementary school 6th graders is higher than that for high school 1st graders with significance in both open communication and problem communication, and also in the level of ego-resiliency and school adaptation, ego-resiliency of elementary school 6th grader is higher in level
Third, regarding the relationship among mother-child communication, ego-resiliency and school adaptation, the higher the level of mother-child communication perceived by the adolescents is, the higher the level of ego-resiliency and school adaptation becomes. Hierarchical regression analysis of school adaptation has shown that ego-resiliency, which is an adolescent’s individual factor, is a more important influence factor than mother-child communication, which is an environmental factor.
This study is meaningful in that it verified the influence of gender, age, level of mother-child communication, and level of ego-resiliency, by dividing school adaptation into five sub-categories in selecting variables. In order to enhance the level of school adaptation for high teen adolescents who had low level of school adaptation as low teen high teen adolescents, guidance that can enhance the level of ego-resiliency, which is an adolescent’s individual factor, is necessary. Also, differentiated guidance according to sub-factors of ego-resiliency is suggested because this study has shown that different sub-factors of ego-resiliency had differentiated influence depending on the sub-categories of school adaptation.