Abstract
Abstract: Interpersonal competence is a major part of one’s social competence which is based on one’s cognition and emotion and aimed at one’s goal fulfillment and emotion satisfaction or improvement of one’s interpersonal relationship and get manifested as effective and appropriate interpersonal behaviors in various social circumstances. As one social competence, interpersonal competence is the important driving force for one’s successful socialization and adaptation to the society, while academic achievement is the core indicator of one’s learning ability and school environment adaptability. These two are the key aspects of teenager’s individual development and also significant for them to get adapted to the society in the future.
For junior high school students, adaptability in various aspects gets developed in different degrees in the double developmental contexts of family and school and gets manifested as division of interpersonal competence and difference in academic achievement. Thus, a systematic study of the junior high school students’ interpersonal competence and academic achievement has its theoretical and realistic significance for the improvement of the future social development.
Based on the questionnaire survey which included EMBU-Chinese Version, Interpersonal Competence Questionnaire-Chinese Version (ICQ-R) and a questionnaire of the teacher-student relationship of junior high school students and peer nomination from 586 junior high school students ranging from grade one to grade three, this study established and validated a theoretical model through a structural equation model and explored the interactive relationship model of junior high school students’ interpersonal competence, their academic achievement and the developmental contexts of these two factors. The results showed: (1) The junior high school students of grade two had better interpersonal competence (F=3.458, p=.032) and girl students were better at handling interpersonal problems than boy students (F=7.617, p=.006). The academic achievement of the students who had better interpersonal competence was better than those whose interpersonal competence was not so good; the interpersonal competence and the academic achievement of the popular students were much better than those who were not popular (F=9.564, p=.001). (2) Good parenting could greatly improve junior high school students' interpersonal competence and this competence was helpful for the development of teacher-student relationship and peer relationship; good parent-child relationship, teacher-student relationship and peer relationship would greatly improve junior high school students' academic proficiency. (3) The structural equation model indicated that junior high school students' interpersonal competence was directly influenced by their family parenting contexts and exerted influence on the school interpersonal contexts. The two context systems influenced students' academic achievements directly or indirectly. The individuals got their social and academic development in the systemic interaction between them and their developmental contexts.
Finally, we arrived at the conclusion: For teenagers, the interpersonal competence of individuals was much more influenced by their family parenting contexts while the academic achievement was much more influenced by their school contexts. The various individual development areas brought about indirect and invisible relevance and interaction through the same contexts; the social development and non-social development of individuals relied on the direct interaction between them and the contexts and were influenced by the interactive effect of different context. The further research needs to be carried out in the future.
Key words
Key Words: junior high school student /
interpersonal competence /
academic achievement /
developmental context
Cite this article
Download Citations
Relationships among Interpersonal Competence, Academic Achievement and Developmental Contexts of Junior High School Students[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2012, 35(2): 391-395
{{custom_sec.title}}
{{custom_sec.title}}
{{custom_sec.content}}