The Self-regulation Characteristics Of Elementary And Secondary School Students And Its Effects On School Adjustment

Since the recent two decades, he school adjustment question about primary and middle school students has been become the focus for education researchers. The researchers think the transition from primary school to middle school is the hardest. When the students experience the transition from primary school to middle school, at the same time they are adolescent, they have to face the quick changes of their body, cognitive and psychology, and these changes make it not easy to adjust school. If we can improve the ability of students’self-regulation, it does not only can accelerate their school adjustment, but also facilitate their future society adjustment.Methods used in the study included interview and questionnaire survey etc. Multivariate statistical analysis, such as correlation analysis, regression analysis and covariance structure equation were synthetically employed. The aim was to research self-regulation and school adjustment, and the research examined the structure of self-regulation, the development of primary and middle school students, the impact on the self-regulation and school adjustment, especially the mediate effects between environment and school adjustment. The investigation has got several conclusions as follows:1. The construct of Self-regulation is second-order Multi-dimensional, including motive self-regulation, strategic self-regulation and behavioral self-regulation. And motive self-regulation includes goals setting, study habit and study autonomy; strategic self-regulation includes cognitive strategies, time planning and time distribution; behavioral self-regulation includes volition management, daily behavior and schoolyard behavior. The self-regulation questionnaire was made based on the interview of teachers, and passes rigorous psychometrics tests, has good reliability and validity. It can be used to measure the self-regulation of primary and middle school students.2.The study aimed to the development of self-regulation found, self-regulation declined as students’grade ascend, but the development characteristic was affected by study burden. After controlling students’study burden, the grade difference was significant only on the dimension of motive self-regulation. At the same time, sexual difference was significant on several dimensions of self-regulation, such as study autonomy, time distribution and schoolyard behavior. Female students behaved better than male students significantly. After controlling the achievement, the sexual difference was still significant on the dimension of study autonomy and time distribution.3.The study aimed to the influential factors for self-regulation found, students from normal family performed better than students from divorced family;Only children and non-only children had no significant difference on any dimension of self-regulation. Low and high socioeconomic status only differed significantly on time distribution; High parents’education had positive effect on children’s self-regulation development, specifically low and high mothers’education only showed different marginally significance on study autonomy, but low and high fathers’education showed significant differences on volition management, study autonomy, time planning, time distribution and schoolyard behavior.Any dimension of family function, peer norms and class climate showed significant correlation with self-regulation, the correlation between study burden and self-regulation was significantly negative. Peer norms, family conflict, family autonomy and classmate relationship could significantly predict self-regulation and three dimensions, and study burden could significantly predict behavioral self-regulation. Environment predictive factors had a little difference for male and female students. Firstly, the same predictive factors on motive self-regulation, strategic self-regulation and behavioral self-regulation for male and female students were peer norms, conflict and classmate relationship, but family autonomy also predicted male students’motive self-regulation strategic self-regulation and behavioral self-regulation. For female students, besides the same predictive factors, family supervision could also significantly predict their motive self-regulation and family supervision and teacher-student relationship were significant predictive factors for their behavioral self-regulation. The best- fit model for self-regulation effective factors was that family function and class climate could affect self-regulation directly, and also through peer norms affect self-regulation indirectly.4. The study focused the relation between self-regulation and school achievement found that, all the three dimensions of self-regulation could predict school achievement significantly, but school achievement could not significantly predict any dimension of self-regulation.The study focused the relation between self-regulation and offensive behavior found that, motive self-regulation and behavioral self-regulation could predictive offensive behavior significantly after controlling the former offensive behavior. But offensive behavior could not predict any self-regulation dimension after controlling the former self-regulation scoring. In general, self-regulation is the causation for school adjustment, and school adjustment is the result of self-regulation.5. The study about effective factors for school adjustment found that, students from normal families showed significantly higher achievement than students from divorced families, but the two groups showed no significance on offensive behavior. Only children and non-only children showed significant difference on offensive behavior, only children performed poorer than non-only children, but they did not perform significant difference on school achievement. There was significant sexual difference on offensive behavior and school achievement, and male students behaved poorer than female on both aspect.Any dimension of self-regulation had significant correlation with school achievement and offensive behavior. Peer norms related with school achievement significantly, not significantly related with offensive behavior. Teacher-student relationship, classmate relationship, discipline negatively related with offensive behavior.They had positive correlation with school achievement, and study burden had negative correlation with achievement. In the end, the best-fit model showed family function, peer norms and class climate affected school adjustment (achievement or offensive behavior) indirectly through self-regulation.At the discussion part of the dissertation, the author synthetically analyzed the important conclusions, summarized education practice of the research results, advanced the deficiency of the research, and conceived of the future study.