This study was made to investigate whether the self-encouragement would mediate the relationship between the adolescents’ feeling of inferiority and school life adjustment. This study surveyed 422 adolescents(first to third graders in high school) at general high school in Daegu, Gyeongsangbuk-do, Ulsan, Chungcheong-do, Gangwon-do, and Seoul metropolitan area.

The data were analyzed by SPSS statistics 25.0 program. T-test and variance analysis were conducted to find out the difference according to the socio-demographic background, and correlation analysis was conducted to find out the relationship between variables. Also, in order to find out mediating effect of self-encouragement in the relationship between adolescents’ feeling of inferiority and school life adjustment, the direct and indirect effects were verified by applying SPSS Process Macro Model 4 of Hayes(2017).

This study, Gender, grade, academic performance, economic situation, and father''s occupation that influenced the sub-factors of school life adjustment were set as control variables. The major findings of this study were as follows.
First, adolescents’ feeling of inferiority had a negative correlation with relationship between students and teachers. school classes, friendship, and self-encouragement. Also, self-encouragement had a positive correlation with relationship between students and teachers, school classes, friendship, and school rules. Second, the mediating effect of self-encouragement was verified in the effect of adolescents'' feeling of inferiority on the sub-factors of school life adjustment. Adolescents'' feeling of inferiority did not affect relationship between students and teachers and school classes, so the mediating effect of self-encouragement was not significant. Adolescents'' feeling of inferiority had a direct effect on friendship, and the indirect effect on self-encouragement was found to be significant. Adolescents'' feeling of inferiority did not significantly affect school rules, so the mediating effect of self-encouragement was not verified.

The results of suggest that in order to increase school life adjustment, adolescents'' feeling of inferiority should be reduced and self-encouragement should be improved. Also, in order to help adolescents’ school life adjustment in the COVID-19 situation, the program which is focused on improving friendship and self-encouragement is needed. Finally, this result suggest the need to investigate that whether these results were caused by the circumstances of COVID-19 or characteristics of modern adolescence.