The Influence Of Kinship-boarding On Pupils’ Sharing Behavior And The Mediating Mechanism Of Empathy

Boarding school is the key carrier to implement the rural compulsory education policy.Researchers have long paid attention to the influence of its special school environment on children’s psychological development.In the past,many researchers expressed their concerns about the adverse effects of the separation of family ties in boarding education,but these concerns ignored the inter-subjectivity of school administrators.The "class-type accommodation" which arranges students’ boarding according to class or grade is common in boarding schools.However,some boarding primary schools in Yunnan Province are exploring and creatively implementing the "Big with Small Kinship-Boarding" way in reality.This study focused on the residential environment in the development of children’s sharing behaviors and the influence factors of individual of this problem,through the investigation and experiment,the method of comparing Kinship-Boarding pupils under the share such as type,class consciousness,motive and behavior status,analysis of moral reasoning,empathy,cognitive factors and emotional factors on the influence of different way of boarding primary school students sharing behavior.The purpose is to provide new evidence for the impact of boarding education on children’s psychological development,and help boarding schools to improve the way students live in dormitory management and improve children’s well-being.A total of 1272 students from grade 3 to grade 6 of 7 boarding primary schools in a township of Lincang City,Yunnan Province（effective subjects 1228:kinship-type 828 vs.class-type 400）participated in study 1.In study 1A,story completion paradigm was used to test students’ awareness of sharing.Study 1B used a self-invented situational story as a priming stimulus to measure the active/passive sharing behavior of primary school children by using variations of the dictator paradigm,and established a model to investigate the mechanism by which KinshipBoarding influences the sharing behavior of primary school children.In study 1c,participants’ motivation to share was examined by using a motivational ranking paradigm.In study 2,the influence of Kinship-Boarding on primary school children’s sharing behavior was investigated again,and a sample of day-school students was added to further investigate the influence of Kinship-Boarding and stay-at-home management on primary school children’s sharing behavior.A total of 439 primary school students from grades 3 to 6（1 Kinship-Boarding school with 92 children vs.2non-boarding schools with 347 children）from a town in Chuxiong city,Yunnan Province participated in study 2.Combining the two studies,we get the following results:（1）The overall proportion of primary school children with the awareness of sharing is low,but the proportion of Kinship-Boarding children with the awareness of sharing is significantly higher than class-type boarding children and day-school children.In the sample with the awareness of sharing,whether boarding or not,the sharing behavior described by primary school children is mainly food sharing,and less involves the age and identity information of the subject and object of the behavior.（2）Kinship-Boarding children attach more importance to altruistic sharing motivation than class-type boarding children and day-school children.In general,with the development of grade,primary school children pay less attention to the egoistic sharing motivation,while pay more attention to the altruistic and social sharing motivation.（3）Kinship-Boarding children have higher active sharing behavior and passive sharing behavior than class-type boarding children and day school children.Under the influence of cost factors,the active sharing behavior of primary school children is lower than that of passive sharing behavior.The difference between active sharing behavior and passive sharing behavior is different under different boarding patterns,and the difference between Kinship-Boarding children is the smallest,indicating that they have less calculation of sharing cost.（4）The scores of moral reasoning ability of primary school children were not significantly different between different boarding patterns and different grades.Moral reasoning ability positively predicted children’s active sharing behavior,but not their passive sharing behavior,suggesting that there was a qualitative difference between active sharing behavior and passive sharing behavior.（5）The results of mediation test showed that affective and cognitive empathy played a mediating role in the process of boarding pattern affecting children’s sharing behavior.The effects of cognitive and emotional transference were different in the sub-samples separated by sharing consciousness or not.The mediating effect of cognitive empathy was significant in the condition of awareness of sharing.In the absence of awareness of sharing,both cognitive and affective transference were significant.This study draws the following conclusions:Compared with class-type boarding school and day school,Kinship-Boarding can promote the acquisition of awareness of sharing,the improvement of sharing behavior and the development of empathy.Kinship-Boarding improves the sharing behavior of primary school children by promoting the development of empathy.Cognitive empathy and affective empathy differ in this process.With the formation of individual awareness of sharing,the activation of sharing behavior becomes less dependent on empathy.This study failed to make a further distinction between awareness of sharing and the boundary conditions of mediating effects are not clear.Although the process of the influence of boarding pattern on sharing behavior has been investigated from multiple dimensions and perspectives,it is still difficult to get a complete picture of sharing behavior.Although Kinship-Boarding is beneficial to improve children’s sharing behavior score and is a meaningful improvement of management mode,it still faces many problems in reality and there is still a large space for improvement.It is hoped that this study can arouse more researchers’ attention to the current situation of boarding children,promote the improvement of boarding modes,and improve the well-being of boarding children.