The purpose of this study was two-fold. One was to develop a teacher rating scale of school adjustment behavior for elementary school students, which was composed of behavioral indicators reported by teachers as important for school adjustment and observable in the classroom. The other was to rest its reliability and validity (e.g., construct, discriminant, criterion-related). Two-hundred fifty-nine elementary school teachers participated in the initial survey of free responses on behaviors that could be displayed by well-adjusted students. From this survey, 1,823 behavioral indicators were collected. A preliminary set of behavioral indicators rated as observable in the classroom by 18 elementary school teachers was administered to 288 elementary school teachers, who were asked to rare the appropriateness of each item for observing school adjustment behavior. A secondary set of items was used for the teacher rating scale of school adjustment behavior for elementary school students. Both the teacher rating scale and a criterion test (the Korean version of T-CRS) were administerd to 181 elementary school teachers, and the data were collected from 524 elementary school students at grades 1 through 6. The data were analyzed by item-total correlations, principal component analyses, correlations among factors, MANOVA, ANOVA, t-tests, correlations between scores on the teacher rating scale and scores on the criterion test, and internal consistency coefficients. The results were summarized as follows. First, the factor regarding school learning was extracted as a significant factor from all of the elementary grades; however, 'basic learning behaviors' was from lower grades but 'academic competence' was from higher grades. In addition, factors regarding adjustment to school life, rule observance, and peer relations were extracted as significant factors throughout the elementary grades. Second, correlations among factors extracted from each grade were all significantly positive and above the moderate level. Third, gender differences at the 1st grade were nor significant. Also, gender differences in the 'academic competence' at the 4th grade and in the 'peer relations/teacher relations' at the 5th grade were not significant. However, gender differences in other factors and totals were found significant. Fourth, differences in school adjustment behavior by the level of academic achievement were all significant. Fifth, scores from the teacher rating scale were positively related to scores from the criterion test. Sixth, the internal consistency coefficients of the teacher rating scale were all above .90. These findings support that the teacher rating scale of school adjustment behavior is valid and reliable and consists of both grade-general and grade-specific items. The results of this study imply that a valid and reliable teacher rating stale of school adjustment behavior for elementary school students be useful for school counseling and school psychological interventions. Finally, the limitations of this study and the suggestions for further research were presented.
Since Weiss(1974) and Cobb(1976), many studies on social support have shown that social support influences an individual's mental health and personal adjustment, and involves the broad protective functions provided by social relationship from members of the social network. As children are undergoing the physical, emotional, social and other processes of development, they may be more vulnerable to the various stressful life events. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to review recent research on children's social support network, especially, the characteristics and development of children's social network and the stress-buffering effects of social support on children's psychological adjustment. The implications of previous findings on children's social network are discussed in relation to adjustment of and intervention process for children.
The present study was designed to examine mother's individual and perceived other Korean patents' parenting beliefs, parenting behavior and accomplishment-oriented pressure in relation to their children's school stage. Data were collected from 423 mothers who had children attending primary, middle, high school or university. The results indicated that there were no significant differences in individual and perceived social parenting beliefs among children's school stages However, perceived social parenting beliefs were higher than mother's individual ones, meaning that mothers perceived other Korean mothers as oriented more toward intellectual achievement than personality education, more toward maturation than environment, and more toward individual than group. Mother's parenting behavior varied largely at the point of their children's college entrance. Mother's children were over-protected, rationally guided, and pressed for school achievement until they graduated from high school. Finally, mother's individual parenting beliefs were associated somewhat strongly with their parenting behavior. These findings were discussed in the educational contexts of Korean society.
Little empirical study has been conducted to figure out how environmental factors including family, school, and peers are related to academic and affective characteristics of science-gifted high school students. This study investigated the relationship of perceived parenting styles to academic performance and self-esteem of the 10th grade science-gifted students (N=141) who are relatively homogeneous with high intellectual capability. Simple regression analysis was employed to understand the relationship. Out of the four sub-categories of parenting styles, only achievement-oriented parenting style of both mother and father was found to account for 6.5 percent and 4.5 percent of the variance of grade point average, respectively. Love-oriented parenting of both mother and father perceived by the participants explained 15 percent of the variance of self-esteem, respectively. These results are significant in terms of pinpointing the specific parenting styles that are associated with both academic performance and self-esteem of science-gifted high school students. Further research was suggested that can help understand the characteristics of science-gifted high school students.