The Effects of Group Counseling for Improving School Adjustment - A focus on maladjusted elementary students
AUTHOR : 조현주
INFORMATION : page. 103~123 / 2010 Vol.17 No.1
ABSTRACT
The study was designed to evaluate the effects of group counseling for school-unadjusted children who are
at risk of lasting school adjustment. The program focused on the decrease of behavioral problems and the
enhancement of self esteem, parent-children communication, interpersonal relationship competence and
school life and class attitudes. The subjects were recruited from those elementary school students who had
been referred to counseling for school maladjustment problems by the class’ teacher and they were then
divided into experimental and control groups. There were a total of 10 sessions during the 5 week study
period, each session lasting for 90 minutes. The self-esteem scales, parent communication scales,
interpersonal relationship competence scales, behavioral problem scales, and the class teachers\' evaluations of
children problematic behavior scales were used for this study. The results showed that at post t-test, the
subjects who had participated in counseling groups(group) reported significant improvement of self esteem,
communication levels between parent and child, interpersonal relationship competence and experienced a
decrease in behavioral problems (in self-report and class’ teachers’ evaluation), while the control group did
not report any significant improvements or decreases. At the 18 day follow-up point, these changes
experienced by the experiment group on the improvement of self-esteem scale, interpersonal relationship
competence scale and decrease of behavioral problems scale remained. However, the differences between the
two groups had decreased at the 18 day follow-up test point. Finally, the implications and limitations of
this study were discussed.
Key words : maladjusted children, behavioral problems, self esteem, parent-children communication, interpersonal
relationships