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Social Relations and School Life Satisfaction in South Korea

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Abstract

This study pays special attention to adolescents who are at the critical stage of social, cognitive and emotional development and their satisfaction with school life which is important for their educational experience and adult life. The purpose of this study is to examine how students’ relationships with friends, teachers and parents are associated with their school life satisfaction. We conducted hierarchical linear modeling with nationally representative data on 3,790 high school seniors in the consideration of different school types (general and vocational high schools) reflecting the contextual characteristics of South Korean education system. Our findings show that all those relations are associated with school life satisfaction and that some distinctive dimensions of each relation matter for students’ school life satisfaction. In particular, teacher-student relationship was found to shape students’ satisfaction with school life both at individual and school level. In spite of several limitations, the broad investigation of students’ social relations provided a policy implication for improving adolescents’ satisfaction with their school lives.

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Notes

  1. In the Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale (MSLSS), students’ satisfaction with school life is measured by 8 items; (1) I look forward to going to school, (2) I like being in school, (3) School is interesting, (4) I wish I didn’t have to go to school, (5) There are many things about school I don’t like, (6) I enjoy school activities, (7) I learn a lot at school, and (8) I feel bad at school (Huebner 2001).

  2. Epstein and McPartland (1976) defined the quality of school life by three dimensions such as general satisfaction with school, commitment to school work, and attitudes toward teachers.

  3. Baker (1999) measured students’ appraisals of school satisfaction with three items, “I like being in school,” “School is interesting,” and “I wish I didn’t have to go to school (reversed).” Takakura et al. (2010) similarly assessed school satisfaction with three items, “I like school,” “School is a nice place to be,” and “Going to school is boring (reversed).”

  4. Special purpose high schools account for only a small proportion of total high schools in South Korea (5.26 % in 2011) [Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST) 2011]. Since the KEEP had its purpose on investigating the overall characteristics of Korean education system, special purpose high schools were not sampled in the baseline year, 2004.

  5. You can find more detailed information on the KEEP at http://keep.nhrd.net/jsp/index.jsp.

  6. The surveys were administered in Korean but the English version of questionnaire is available on the website (http://eng.krivet.re.kr/eu/eg/prg_euFCALs.jsp). We also provided the actual survey questions included in our analysis in the “Appendix”.

  7. Since the items were based on five-point scale, the average score is classified as a low level of academic achievement.

  8. Though the scores of Cronbach’s alpha were low (for father 0.550 and mother 0.545), we combined those two items to represent the degree of parent’s support for their children.

  9. The variables included in our models are in italic letters, while those not included represent the reference categories.

  10. Although this is not the focus of our study, we will provide a conjecture by investigating the changes of Korean education policy in the discussion.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Duksung Women’s University, 209 Humanities and Social Science Building, 419 Ssangmun-dong, Dobong-gu, Seoul, 132-714, Korea

    Doo Hwan Kim

  2. Department of Sociology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Ji Hye Kim

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  1. Doo Hwan Kim
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  2. Ji Hye Kim
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Correspondence to Doo Hwan Kim.

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Kim, D.H., Kim, J.H. Social Relations and School Life Satisfaction in South Korea. Soc Indic Res 112, 105–127 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-012-0042-8

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