A Study On The Relationships Between The Actual-Preferred Congruence Of The Class Environment And The Self-Concept And Academic Achievement Of Pupils

For many decades, the study of relationship between students and school/class environment had tended to remain as a tradition in developmental psychology and school psychology. The viewpoint of ecology treated people's development as "Person-Environment Interaction", the optimal matching between person and environment was best for his/her development. In order to validate the theory, this study made use of a 2-level hieratical linear model to detect the relation between class environment at both the individual level and the class level and pupils' self-concept and their academic achievement. In this research, the sample was constitutive of 913 students of 4-6 grade from 62 classes of 6 elementary schools in Wuhan city. And My Class Inventory and Self Descriptive Questionnaire I were used to measure class environment and self-concept respectively. The results were as follows:1. The apperception of actual class environment and preferred class environment were both different among teachers, pupils and their parents. Teachers perceived better relationship between teachers and students, schoolmate relationships, order and discipline, lower competition than pupils. At the same time, teachers preferred best relationship between teachers and students, order and discipline, the highest competition and lower learning burden. Students preferred lowest competition and highest learning burden. Parents preferred the lowest relationship between teachers and students and schoolmate relationships.2. Actual class environment had impaction on pupil's self-concept. Both at the individual level and class level, the five factors of Class Environment were important predictors. For example, the better relationship between teachers and students and lower learning burden pupil feel, the higher self-concept they achieve. Class environment has different influence on pupils' self-concept among different class.3. Actual class environment had no impaction on pupils' academic achievement at individual level. But at the class level, the competition had negative while learning burden had positive impaction on academic achievement.4. The actual-preferred class environment congruence of relationship between teachers and students, learning burden and competition had significant influence on pupils' self-concept:If the actual relationship between teachers and students was good, the better relationship between teachers and students pupils preferred, the higher physical appearance, general-school, reading, parent relations, general self and peer relation self-concept they achieved. If the actual learning burden was low, the lower learning burden pupils preferred, the higher general-school, reading, general self and peer relation self-concept they achieved, and at the same time, if the actual learning burden was higher, pupils who preferred higher learning burden achieved better. If the actual competition is more furious, the higher competition atmosphere pupils preferred the higher physical appearance self-concept they achieved.