Many childhood and adolescent behavioral and emotional disorders have developmental precursors and manifest a continuum of symptoms along different pathways. The multifinality of childhood disorders indicates that early intervention is particularly more important in curtailing the onset of various symptoms for children who are at risk. Given the characteristics of childhood behavioral and emotional disorder and considering the context of the Korean children and adolescent mental health needs, this study reviewed empirically proven school-based prevention programs for childhood emotional and behavioral problems in the US. Characteristics of effective school based programs on the primary, secondary, and tertiary level were identified. Direct teaching of problem-solving skills and content specific knowledge using concrete and interactive behavioral methods were common across all levels of intervention. Individual treatment and multisystemic components including parents, teachers and peers were added with increase in the severity of problems. Specificity of the targeted behavior, developmentally appropriate timing of the intervention, as well as duration of treatment and extent of follow up were important ingredients of effective prevention program. It was concluded that a better use of the existing school-based mental health resources can be achieved through universal, primary prevention programs school-wide and secondary prevention programs targeted at children at risk. Future inquiry should evaluate ways to modify these proven programs to improve the current state of the school based mental health services for Korean children and adolescents with behavior and emotional problems.
This study examined the moderating effects of problem-solving and social support on the relationship between child abuse and suicidal ideation. Experimental group was 1st- and 2nd-grade senior highschool students. The total number of observations were 370 students, who were 169 male students and 201 female students. The instruments of the study were problem-solving inventory, social support scale, scale for suicidal ideation, and scale for experiences of child abuse. To explore the relationship between these variables, correlation analysis was implemented. Then hierarchical multiple regression analysis was applied to test how significantly the experiences of child abuse, problem-solving, and social support variables explain the scale for suicidal ideation. The moderating effects of problem-solving ability and social support variables on suicidal ideation was also examined by the analysis. In the result, emotional child abuse showed the highest relation to adolescent's suicidal ideation. In the correlation analysis, physical abuse, child neglect, witnessing to parental violence, and sexual abuse variables showed some significance. However, in the level of explanation, child neglect, emotional child abuse, and complex abuses only showed some significances. Especially, it was confirmed that complex abuses had strong relationship because complex abuses explained scale for suicidal ideation with high significance. The moderating effects of social support and problem solving variables on the relation between suicidal ideation and experiences of child abuse existed significantly. This is because suicidal ideation was lower in the group of high social support than in the group of low social support. For the groups of experiences of child abuse, the group who had problem solving ability had lower suicidal ideation than the group who had not it.
Previous research supported the significance of gender differences in writing performance and also acknowledged the influences of cognitive (e.g., metacognition, critical thinking, verbal working memory) and motivational variables (e.g., writing beliefs) upon the quality of written composition. This study was conducted to examine whether the influences of writers' gender on writing performance would be significant above and beyond the influences of cognitive and motivational variables. One-hundred twenty-three 10th-grade students (53 males, 70 females) participated in this study. Four writing tasks, differentiated by text mode (i.e., narrative, descriptive, expository, persuasive), the verbal working memory test, the critical thinking test, the metacognitive knowledge about writing processes questionnaire, and the writing beliefs inventory were administered. First, the data were analyzed by a repeated-measures analysis of variance to test differences in writing performance by gender and writing task. The results showed that female students performed better on all of the writing tasks than did male students. In the male group, the performance level of narrative writing was higher than that of descriptive, expository, and persuasive writing. In the female group, the performance level of descriptive writing was higher than that of narrative, expository, and persuasive writing. Second, hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to test whether the influences of writers' gender upon writing performance on each writing task would be significant above and beyond those of cognitive and motivational variables. The results revealed that the influences of gender were no longer significant after writing performance on the narrative text was explained by metacognitive knowledge and critical thinking, and that they were no longer significant after writing performance on the expository text was explained by transactional writing beliefs. However, the influences of gender upon writing performance on descriptive and persuasive texts were significant above and beyond those of metacognitive knowledge. These results imply that it be necessary to consider not only students' gender but also their metacognitive knowledge about writing processes, critical thinking skills, and transactional writing beliefs when planning and implementing writing instruction programs or writing assessment. Finally, the suggestions for future studies were discussed.
This study primarily examined relationships among personality, emotional intelligence, and stress at school. Using a 490 high-school student sample, the study took personality test in the second grade of the sample and conducted a follow-up survey in the third grade in terms of emotional intelligence and stress. The results of the study confirmed the hypothesized relationships; Students with higher emotional stability and conscientiousness perceived less stress. The effects of extroversion and agreeableness on stress were moderated by emotional intelligence in such ways that students with high emotional intelligence showed low stress level when they are extrovert whereas students with low emotional intelligence revealed high stress level when they are extrovert. Although agreeableness did not have significant main effect on stress, the agreeableness-stress relationship was stronger for individuals with low emotional intelligence, showing interaction effect. Implications for adolescents' stress management were provided that may utilize the information of individual characteristics in terms of emotion and personality.
The purpose of this study develops the forgiveness program which focuses on the peer relationship of elementary school children, verifies the effectiveness of a devised forgiveness program and then identifies the results of this research. From a research point of view, the forgiveness program was amended with conducting the further preliminary forgiveness instruction program. The Enright's scale of forgiveness was surveyed to all 668 students from 3 elementary schools, located in J city, so that it could chose specific children with low forgiveness. Before the program commenced, it was explained to the parents and children what the purpose and procedure of this research would be and then the forgiveness program conduct only on the 12children whose parents consented and who hoped to be participants themselves. This research specification composed of two-factor mixed designs (2)(treatment group, untreated control group)× (3)(testing period: before, after and continuing)- checked up the relationship of children before and after the forgiveness program, and to the 4 weeks after the program completely finished. The statistics of data was used to analyse through SPSS windows program and Kwakstat(Kwak ho wan, 1993) The forgiveness program was composed of 3steps- introduction, development, completion etc. - and total 6 sessions. Each session progressed with forms of motive induction, goal presentation, lecture, group counseling activation, sharing their experience and impression, presenting the subject, session evaluation, sharing feedback and so on. In accordance to the result of this study, devised forgiveness instruction program increased the forgiveness level of emotion, cognition, behavior, the total forgiveness level which are components of forgiveness and meaningfully the ability of relation of children. Furthermore, the effect was founded to last for 4 weeks after the program. This program was constituted to enable to adapt forgiveness as one way to prevent diverse predictably negative connection and relational trouble frequently able to be generated in peer group. In addition, it is thought to be significant in that confirming the forgiveness was able to increase through educational intervention.