Successful school life of adolescents with multi-cultural family background is one essential experience in their social integration into the mainstream of Korean society. This study examined the effects of neglect and acculturative stress on the school adjustment of adolescents of multi-cultural family, and verified the mediating role of self-esteem. School adjustment was measured with academic performance, relationship with friends, relationship with teachers, and compliance with school rules and regulations.
Two hundreds nine 5th to 9th graders with multi-cultural family background enrolled in schools of Chungbuk province filled out questionnaires, and the data were analyzed by SPSS version 12.0 and AMOS version 7.0.
The findings of this research are as follows. First, school adjustment of multi-cultural adolescents showed statistically significant differences by several socio-demographics. Rural residential setting, cohabitation with two parents, and mother’s fluence of Korean language led to higher school adjustment. The same conditions applied to lower level of neglect and acculturative stress. In the meantime, multi-cultural adolescents’ self-esteem appeared higher with the rural residence and younger age.
Second, neglect and accultrative stress infulenced all four sub-categories of school adujustment, academic performance, relationship with friends, relationship with teachers, and compliance with school rules and regulations, negatively while self-esteem showed positive influence with better school adjustment. It means that the lower their acculturative stress and neglect experienced, the higher self-esteem, the better the adolescents’ school adjustment. Though relative strength of each of the variables varies, neglect was found to be the strongest in its effect, and acculturative stress and self-esteem were effective in descending order.
Third, the impact of neglect and accultrative stress on the four sub-categories of school adjustment seemed to be mediated by self-esteem of multi-cultural adolescents. Heightened self-esteem proved to mediate the negative influences of neglect and acculturative stress on the school adjustment.
To summarise, school adjustment of adolescents of multi-cultural families is not affected by a single factor, but formed and affected by the mutually related structure of all three factors investigated. In order to improve multi-cultural adolescents’ school adjustment, an integrative approach is proposed. In the societal level, promoting social tolerance toward people with multi-cultural background stands out. Eliminating discrimination in every aspect of society based on race, skin clolors, and ethnicity is essential. School programs which promotes multi-culturalism can be very effective. In the familial level, economic hardships which most multi-cultural families are situated need to be lightened with income assistance programs and strengthened family welfare support. Sophisticated language programs according to the various speaking and writing ability of foreign-born mothers are still very important because better communication ability will not only ease family tension but also provide better chances to decent employment which can eventually decrease neglect toward children.
For the last, approaches in individual level also calls for the school involvement. Support programs for the academic achievement, school social work and counseling for neglected multi-cultural adolescents are examples. Especially, as research results suggest promoting the self-esteem of adolescents can protect the harm from neglect and acculturative stress for some extent, school social work programs concentrated on strengthening self-esteem be an effective option to help school adjustment of multi-cultural families.